Dan Rather
NEW YORK CITY:
THE CITY That Never Sleeps is also home to the transit system that never sleeps - a 24/7/365 network of bus and rail lines with 722 miles of subway as its centrepiece. It is fair to say that without this network - which more than 4 million people depend on every day to get them where they need to go - this would not be the sprawling metropolis we have come to know. Take away the subway, and for most New Yorkers, the 'outer boroughs' might as well be Outer Mongolia, as they effectively were before construction started in 1904 on the first nine-mile stretch of track.
ORANGE ALERT
So it is easy to see that, even if New York had not been the city that bore the brunt of 9/11's devastation, the London bombings had the potential to strike a special chord of anxiety here. But this is, of course, the place where the twin towers fell - a city in a perpetual state of Orange Alert. So all the more reason to expect that New Yorkers and their city would receive the news of a round of bombings in an urban centre with a unique combination of apprehension and preparedness.
First, about the apprehension: To the extent that it exists among this city's residents, it is of the low-level variety. Certainly there were those who talked about and even did alter their commuting habits on the Thursday of the first bombings and the next day. But then it was the weekend, and by the start of the next workweek the bombings seemed, for most, to become another faraway news story that had moved from its critical to its investigatory phase. There has been real empathy and sympathy in New York for the people of London. But not a great deal of worry here.
For many people in many places, this could be thought of as a combination of apathy and denial. But for New Yorkers, it might actually represent something of an achievement. An honest look back at the weeks and months following 9/11 recalls a New York brought closer together by tragedy, yes, but also a New York haunted by its collective fears of another attack. Your reporter remembers, for example, the stricken faces on Nov. 12, 2001, the day that American Airlines Flight 587 crashed minutes after takeoff from JFK airport, in what many initially thought was another act of terrorism.
New Yorkers have moved on. But part of that moving on rests on the shared assumption, conscious or unconscious, that New York is safer now, that this city's vulnerabilities have been addressed in the wake of its worst-ever day. Which brings us to preparedness: In many ways, this city has become better prepared for and protected against threats from extremists; and, in many ways, it has not.
SECURITY AND READINESS
Protecting New York's subways is one of the areas where much remains to be done. This is something that the MTA (Metro-politan Transportation Authority), the organisation that runs the subways, seemed to recognise when it announced at the end of 2002 that it was committing $600 million to improving security and readiness in the subways. More than two and a half years later, though, only about five per cent of that money has been spent, and very little, if any of it, on concrete measures.
The London bombings serve as a reminder, if one were needed, that time cannot and should not be wasted in safeguarding possible terrorist targets. You wouldn't think that the City That Never Sleeps would need a wake-up call, especially not about this, but the wake-up call has come. Will we heed it, or will we hit the snooze and roll over?
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster (c) 2005 DJR Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate
