EMERGENCY PLANNERS UNPREPARED FOR CATASTROPHE
Strategy to give Homeland Security authority to address EMP stalled
F. MICHAEL MALOOF
WND.com
Nov. 4, 2013
WASHINGTON – Emergency planners across the country may be ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic blackout from either an electromagnetic pulse or cyber-attack that could knock out the nation’s electrical grid system, an expert confirms in a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the congressional advisory boards of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, has issued a new warning that U.S. utilities have been resisting efforts to harden the grid and local utilities against such an event.
He pointed out that the SHIELD Act, introduced by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., would give the federal government authority to get the utilities to undertake protective measures to guard against an EMP either from a natural solar flare that would hit Earth or a man-made high-altitude nuclear explosion that would emit powerful gamma rays, a form of electromagnetic energy.
However, the legislation may not be going anywhere in Congress.
“When emergency planners from the White House down to local police and fire departments find themselves tasked to plan for an EMP catastrophe in the context of an unprotected electric grid, this will bring enormous pressure to bear on the electric utilities and the NERC,” Pry said.
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