Fire, infrastructure offices launch information-sharing effort

The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) on Monday launched an information-sharing partnership to better inform the nation's "first responders" to emergencies of potential terrorist threats.

Officials said the Emergency Fire Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center would allow the NIPC to transmit information on critical threats to law enforcement networks, national fire associations, 50 state fire marshals, and more than 32,000 fire and emergency medical departments.

The USFA can provide NIPC with "expert interpretation on raw, sensitive threat intelligence, and help us turn it into useful information that first responders can directly act on," NIPC Director Ron Dick said. "Collectively, the eyes and ears of our best-trained safety professionals in each community will serve as the sensors for a national early-warning system to alert us to an attack on the emergency-services infrastructure itself."