If a terrorist’s bomb blew up the Yale Bowl during a football game, thousands of casualties might be cut off from New Haven. West Haven’s Allingtown Fire Department, which is on the other side, might need lots of help.

For many years, police, fire, health, public works and education departments did not give these issues great consideration, at least not in any great detail beyond mutual aid for major fires.

But in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — and with strong encouragement, including financial incentives, from the federal government — they’re thinking, talking and meeting about it now.

The full extent of the planning might be reassuring. Or a shock. But whether it’s widely known or not, it’s taking place.

One goal — especially in Connecticut, one of just two states without county government — is to use the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s National Incident Management System to establish a protocol to create a broader emergency structure that can act regionally in an emergency.

Nearly $40 million in federal money is financing the effort.

The idea, Wallingford Fire Chief Peter Strubel said last week at the first meeting of a new regional emergency planning body, is that in Connecticut, "We can still keep our … 169 cities and towns. But we can bring it together … and make it look like Dade County, Fla., when we need to."

In recent months, area emergency officials have divided the region into four sub-regions and begun stationing equipment such as decontamination trailers in remote locations, both to keep it close to area communities and so that if one area gets cut off by a disaster, others still can respond.

The equipment, much of it bought with U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds, has been selected so area towns for the first time have compatible equipment that they all know how to use, officials said.

"If a situation occurs, these things don’t know any boundaries — New Haven, East Haven, West Haven," said New Haven Fire Chief Michael Grant. "By pooling all of our resources, we’re better equipped to deal with a situation.

"We’ve always had communication with other towns, primarily for fire purposes," Grant said.

But ever since it became clear that a major disaster might just as easily be man-made as an act of God, "it has really heightened," he said.

If there is ever a chemical leak or explosion in West Haven, "It will be in New Haven in 30 minutes. It will be in East Haven in 40 minutes," said East Haven Fire Chief Wayne Sandford, chairman of New Haven Area Special Hazards, a regional emergency response team formed before 9/11 but even more vital now.

The regional body, which represents 16 cities and towns, is one of five regional emergency response teams in the state, joining those in the Hartford, Norwich, Waterbury/Torrington and Fairfield County areas.

It formulates the region’s response to major disasters that cut across local lines.

A second body, the South Central Regional Emergency Planning Committee, aims to do on a regional level what municipal readiness committees already have done in individual cities and towns: have a plan in place for anything that might happen, be it a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.

That organization held its first meeting Wednesday at the New Haven Fire Department academy, with representatives of a number of communities, including New Haven, East Haven, Orange, Milford, Wallingford, Yale University and various state and regional agencies attending.

"It’s much more than just fire" departments cooperating, said Sandford. "It’s fire, it’s police, … it’s health, it’s education. It really crosses all the boundaries for emergency management," he said.

"Massachusetts and Connecticut are the only two places that don’t have county forms of government and it does make it a little trickier, because you’re missing that built-in level of cooperation," said New Haven’s acting chief administrative officer Jennifer Pugh, who is in charge of disbursing $7.6 million in federal funds earmarked for New Haven and the six municipalities that border it.

"But it’s actually gone pretty well," she said. "What we’re getting better at, I think, is identifying where we can cooperate, working with our neighbors."

While it technically belongs to New Haven, one key regional resource is the New Haven Police Department’s new, state-of-the-art Hazardous Devices Unit Response Vehicle, which replaced the department’s 1985-vintage "bomb truck."

The vehicle, bought with $136,000 in Homeland Security funds, is one of four in the state, with the others operated by the Hartford and Stamford police departments and state police.

The vehicle organizes and transports all the things the department might need to identify and begin responding to an emergency, from protective "bomb suits" to sensitive chemical and radiological metering and monitoring equipment, officials said.

"It’s kind of one big, rolling tool box," said Lt. Rick Rohloff, the department’s emergency services coordinator.

The NHPD, under Chief Francisco Ortiz, expects eventually to become the first police department in the state to have all 417 of its sworn officers fully trained and issued protective equipment to respond to any sort of disaster, squad member Ray Crowley said.

While the FBI would be lead investigator in any kind of terrorism event, "we have a great relationship with the state and federal government," Crowley said. "We train jointly with state police and the FBI."

"Readiness" has been a buzzword since the days of Civil Defense and Cold War-era fallout shelters. But what’s going on today is not the same, said Sandford.

"The big difference is that in the ’50s and ’60s it was totally defensive," he said. "Basically, we were building shelters to protect the residents. I think now, after 9/11, we have seen that police and fire are the defenders" of society’s security and well-being."

Now the region’s health directors are meeting and coming up with a regional plan to map out the public health response to various disasters, said East Shore Health District Director Jim Monopoli.

The ultimate goal is to have a statewide public health emergency plan, said David J. Brown, emergency preparedness planner for the state Department of Public Health.

Mark Zaretsky can be reached at mzaretsky@nhregister.comor 789-5722.