|
“If I have 40 acres of forest, how many search dogs will
I need to find a fugitive?” –
Question from Secure Corps summer camp math class
Man, and I thought it was tough figuring when the train
leaving Boston would meet the express from Chicago.
Summer camp has changed a bit since I was a kid. For
many it was an adventure in bad food, bug bites, sunburn, Indian
nicknames, and punched leather wallets that never saw a back
pocket. Not that I didn’t learn anything; for instance I learned to
behave myself in such a manner as to not make my mother want to send
me off every summer.
Then, somewhere along the way, camps started to market
themselves to kids instead of parents. That’s where the money is,
something toy manufacturers figured out years before. Now there are
camps geared toward every conceivable interest, from sports and
horseback riding to computers and NASA’s space camp.
So I suppose it was inevitable someone would come up
with a homeland security summer camp. Funded by a grant from Bucks
County, Pennsylvania, and inspired by the events of September 11,
Secure Corps provides emergency response training to eligible high
school juniors and seniors. Participants must meet criteria for
being “at risk,” such as low income, academic problems, foster care,
and so on.
“This is a great opportunity for at-risk youth to learn
more about homeland security, which is a very hot career path right
now,” claims the
Bucks
County Web site. Secure Corps isn’t something parents have to
spring for; those accepted are paid minimum wage to learn first aid,
CPR (for humans and animals), and other emergency skills. At the
end, participants receive a certification in “terrorism response.”
As at any camp there are drills, but these aren’t snipe
hunts and midnight raids on the canteen. Campers learn to work in
hazardous materials suits, evacuate buildings, and respond to gas
attacks. They are placed in “corps” of 10 or so each, then given
mock homeland security scenarios to study over the summer.
According to the
Philadelphia Inquirer, these include
a bomb threat at a local mall; the possible collapse of a busy
bridge over the Delaware River, and; a subway derailment with 375
people aboard, wiping out tunnel supports and threatening a street
cave-in.
These are not the type of activities you cap off with a round of
S’mores and a chorus of Kumbaya. Instead campers tour various
security operations, including a look at Philadelphia’s First Union
Center. There they learn how security personnel stop a hypothetical
Britney Spears concert from turning into a “Level 3 Mass Casualty
Event.”
Heck, I thought that was the attraction.
I
don’t doubt Secure Corps alumni will be in demand, nor that similar
camps will spring up elsewhere. Bucks County may have led the way
but if there is enough of the other kind of bucks involved, private
companies will get in the game alongside Secure Corps and basketball
camp.
It
is just like Americans to turn a horrific attack into a growth
industry, as the security business is becoming. Before you write
the editor or flame me with email, I see this as a good thing.
There are considerably more frivolous uses for our great material
blessings, and it is a strength of the American system that it
encourages and rewards those who step up to meet a need. I wish
them Godspeed.
You
can make a living doing good in the United States, as we saw on
September 11. Even if not all Secure Corps campers make security a
career, it beats spending the summer swabbing calamine lotion on a
full body poison oak rash.
On
Brentmorrison.com: Links to related news; Brent’s other columns on
September 11 reaction.
|
