Hospital staff, firefighters and other emergency workers in the US are still not ready to deal with another crisis like last year’s Sept. 11 attacks, but the government has the expertise to train them, a scientists’ group said on Monday. The Department of Defense and other government agencies have the technology to educate experts in the techniques they will need, and a little coordination could fill in the gaps, the Federation of American Scientists said in a report. ‘‘The nation’s firefighters, nurses, physicians and other first responders indicate that they are not prepared for a weapons of mass destruction attack,’’ said Henry Kelly, the federation’s president. The report said federal planners were not making use of technology like that used in flight and combat simulators, although it could be easily adapted to train people in case of an attack using weapons of mass destruction such as a nuclear bomb or chemical or biological weapons. ‘‘On a flight simulator they can give you an experience that you wouldn’t dare do using a real plane,’’ said Kelly. ‘‘In the case of weapons of mass destruction there are lots of things that there is no way you can actually experience — radiation burns, what anthrax lesions look like for people of all races and shapes and sizes and so on.’’ The Defense Department knows how to create the interactive computer programmes, while doctors and emergency workers have the expertise needed for the content of such a programme, he said. ‘‘What we say in the report is you need to draw on talent across the government and also local governments,’’ Kelly said. (Reuters)
