Today more than ever, communications center professionals who receive and/or dispatch emergency services can use a valuable resource like Preparing for Terrorism: The Public Safety Communicator's Guide. This book starts with an overview of national and international terrorism, while emphasis throughout the book is on how to prepare communications center staff and their families for a terrorist event by providing them with well-thought out employee emergency plans and contingencies. Issues involved in protecting the physical security of the building, communications towers, and back-up sites are examined. Solutions to communications problems, such as cellular and landline telephone overload situations, are addressed as well. The potential effect of a terrorist attack on operators worried about family and friends, as well as Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) procedures, is also discussed in detail. The result is a book that provides readers with a rare opportunity to look at terrorism preparedness from the point-of-view of the communications center, the first link to safety for 98% of the U.S. population now covered by 9-1-1 operators. As cellular phones become the norm, and terrorist events are relayed as they unfold, these emergency communication centers and the individuals who staff them will remain on the frontlines, working to coordinate the efforts of first responders, as well as the influx of local, state, and federal resources that follows any terrorist incident.
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