The Next Attack Will Be Digital and Realtime

I WAS WRAPPING UP TO LEAVE EARLY ON WEDNESDAY when I got this email:

2 pm Eastern Standard Time
Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Dear JoeSentMe member:
I am sorry to interrupt your holiday with bad news, but I wanted to bring you up to date on two developing stories that directly impact travel facilities around the world.

First, the breaking news. The Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) is quite literally under terrorist attack. According to the IBN TV Network, the Indian affiliate of CNN, terrorists have attacked the city’s two premier hotels, The Oberoi and The Taj, as well as the city’s main train station (Victoria Terminus), a hospital, a movie theater, a popular restaurant and several other locations. At least a 18 people are dead and live gun battles are apparently breaking out a various places throughout the sprawling city.

…  If you want to follow developments live as it is being covered by the English-language IBN News channel, surf to http://www.mediahopper.com, click on India and then click on IBN Live. But be aware: The feed is quite raw and there literally pictures of active attacks.
Joe Brancatelli // joesentme.com

I was just going to take a peek, and spent hours watching the early morning news coverage … and surfing to other related sites.  If the 2001 World Trade Center attack was the most photographed/videotaped tragedy, the 2008 “Longest Running Horror Show” in Mumbai may be the most digitally recorded.

Noah Shachtman posted Mumbai Attack Aftermath Detailed, Tweet by Tweet on Wired.com.

First-hand accounts of the deadly Mumbai attacks are pouring in on Twitter, Flickr, and other social media.

Twitter has fresh news every few seconds, on Mumbai, Bombay, #Mumbai, and @BreakingNewz.

“Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also Metro cinema next door,” tweets mumbaiattack. “Blood needed at JJ hospital,” adds aeropolowoman, supplying the numbers for the blood bank.

A Google map of the attacks has already been set up. So has a shockingly-current Wikipedia page, which features a picture of one of the gun-toting attackers.

The local bloggers at Metblogs Mumbai have new updates every couple of minutes. So do the folks at GroundReport. Dozens of videos have been uploaded to YouTube. But the most remarkable citizen journalism may be coming from “Vinu,” who is posting a stream of harrowing post-attack pictures to Flickr.

I noticed that many of the early pictures posted on the news came from the bloggers and social networks.

[photopress:SSRescue_web.jpg,full,pp_image]

Maybe we need to add a position of internet intelligence officer (IIO) within the staffing of those command and control rigs that were purchased in the past seven years.  I think the cable companies can bundle broadband with the televison and land-line hook-ups for the command post.

Firefighter Brian Humphrey would be the person I would ask to set the position up, this article outlines his success as a “One Man Geek Squad” in his role as an LAFD public information officer

How would your department respond to the TAJ hotel?  Do you go in under an “active shooter” scenario or wait for law enforcement to render the scene safe?

August Vernon:  Mass/Active Shooter First Responder Awareness card, April 2007 Firehouse.com article

Nelson Tang, MD:    Role of Tactical EMS in Support of Public Safety and the Public Health Response to a Hostile Mass Casualty Incident

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward

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