But we absolutely know that some city fire chief, or state emergency preparedness director, will be looking at a leaking railroad car or an overturned semi-trailer truck and wondering just what the Sam Hill is in that container that might threaten both his own squads and the public at large.
That is why it remains, even in a post-9-11 world, crucial that those most responsible for the safety of the public have as much knowledge as possible about the nature and amount of dangerous substances that are stored in, and pass through, their communities.
And, even in that post-9-11 world, the people most responsible for the public's safety do not work at the Pentagon or the CIA. As we supposedly learned on 9-11, they work for the local fire and police departments, emergency medical services and transit authorities.
Yet, in the name of homeland security, the department thereof is eyeing new rules that would conceal some of that crucial information even from local emergency service officials.
That is madness.
In trying to think like a terrorist, federal officials have apparently ginned up all manner of imaginings about what they would do if they were trying to kill a lot of people and spread a lot of fear. Taking a rifle, or a rocket-propelled grenade, to a clearly labeled tanker of chlorine or a truck of nuclear sludge, understandably, came to mind.
The tank car that sprung a potentially tragic leak in South Salt Lake City recently bore a label that was not totally accurate, as it had been turned into a soup of dangerous acids beyond the mere sulfuric acid it was labeled as carrying. But even that incomplete label was enough to put emergency crews on their guard and allow them to handle the situation more than competently, to great relief all around.
It's not that it couldn't happen. Terrorists could, indeed, use labels and other public information to choose their targets. But, even then, emergency crews will not react properly unless they know what they are dealing with.
The worst-case-scenario builders at the Department of Homeland Security need to spend a little less time trying to think like terrorists, and a little more time trying to think like fire chiefs.
