Adam Tuss, wtop.com

WASHINGTON — When an emergency situation takes hold of the D.C. region — like an earthquake or massive snow storm — are we guilty of an “every person for him or herself” mentality?

Leaders at the area’s Council of Governments have been asking that question, and are suggesting it’s time to take a regional approach to large scale incident response.

“D.C., for example, has a really great emergency operations center, but they are mostly focused on the 69 square miles of the District of Columbia and the 600,000 resident of D.C.,” says David Robertson, executive director of the council. “Likewise, Arlington is worried about Arlington, Montgomery is worried about Montgomery [and so on]. Nobody is really worried about the region.”

This week, COG leaders will highlight what they are calling the Regional Incident Cooperation (RIC) Program. It is a way to make sure the region as a whole is communicating on the same wavelength during emergencies.

“What we are trying to do is take the capacity and the skill that is embedded in a 24/7 emergency operations center and infuse it with a program that is thinking regionally and how to make those connections,” says Robertson.

There have been calls for the region to develop a centrally located decision-making body to make judgment calls during emergency situations. Robertson backs away from that idea.

“It’s pretty hard to say ‘OK, something bad just happened in Arlington, but the folks who are calling the shots are these folks X,'” he says. “And X is this new regional authority that is going to tell Arlington what to do in terms of managing the incident, communicating with the public, communicating with the media.”

Robertson says it may be possible to get the RIC program up and running quickly enough to deal with any potential snow emergencies this winter.

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