When our committee began in the fall of 2000 to evaluate the potential of the Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) program to enhance local ability to respond to the consequences of weapons of mass destruction terrorism, I could not have imagined the tragedies that would befall us as committee members and as a society. Many of us on the committee have had personal losses from the assault on the World Trade Center and on our sense of physical and psychological safety. We are all deeply saddened by the death of Raymond Downey a longtime fire department veteran and expert in urban search and rescue who.
