By William H. Webster.
“The firestorm of April, 1992 burned deeply into the fabric of Los Angeles. The toll of death, destruction and human misery left this time compels us to recall another such tragedy — one that scorched the ground of the City and its people lust over a quarter of a century ago. To read the reporr of the Governor's Commission impaneled to study that tragedy causes us to experience a profound sense that, while much has changed since 1965, much remains the same,…..We have discovered a general lack of emergency preparedness, and a specific lack in the period before the Simi Valley verdicts of preparedness for the possibility of civil disorder. As we describe in Chapters Three and Four of our report, the City and the police department each have created general mechanisms intended to cope with emergencies. As we describe in Chapters Five and Six. to varying degrees, each has devoted modest effort to preparedness planning and training, However, the preparedness efforts of neither have resulted in anything that reasonably can he considered a "plan" for response to an emergency. Rather, it appears to be more accurate to state that each has collected and summarized a variety of materials having to do generally with emergency powers of government and the subject of emergency response. However, neither the City nor the police department has produced much in the way of substantive guidance with regard to specific emergency response objectives, priorities, tasks or assignments….”
