TykeClone's Journal: Thoughts on a Homeland Security meeting

I am a volunteer fireman and ambulance driver in my hometown. Last night, we had one of the state fire marshals in town giving a talk on homeland security, terrorism, and bombings. One may think that this has no place in small town Iowa, but he did have some stuff to look out for.

Let me make it clear - I don't think that small town midwest is or will be the target of middle eastern suicide bombers. But we have been the target of various attacks - ALF stuff and that kid from Wisconsin trying to draw a smiley face with pipe bombs.

We have a couple more pressing problems in the midwest that made this class good.

- The first is meth - and the associated labs and booby traps that go with it. Many of the devices that the fire marshal showed were pulled from meth labs.

- A second is the ready access to the components of fertilizer bombs (nasty) - any nutjob could get their hands on enough explosives to cause serious damage (see oklahoma city).

- A third (almost uniquely rural) issue is that there is still old explosives laying around in various outbuildings. They're not everywhere, but it is good to have an idea about what you're looking at if you come across them.

Say what you will about the whole Homeland Security thing, but this class I went to last night was well worthwhile.

If only Bush would provide more money for this

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Perhaps we should be funding Iraq for $30 billion and Homeland Security for $200 billion. I'm all for our locals knowing what they're looking at.

Re:If only Bush would provide more money for this

[TykeClone]

It was one guy with a powerpoint show and some stuff he's collected on the job. Real interesting stuff, but not expensive (for a government program). We had good turnout with people from 2 or 3 volunteer services there.

As for funding, we've been told that "homeland security" money is available (we put that in all of our grants :) ), but it is slow to get out. We're trying to get a bunch of pagers upgraded, and have been waiting on the money for that for around a year now.

Like I said, we don't face a