What If? Dallas Talks Disaster Plan

What if the plan to blow up Fountain Place tower had succeeded?

One day after the FBI foiled a terrorist plot to blow up the Downtown Dallas skyscraper many workers there say they still have the jitters.

“You have all those things run through your mind. Am I gonna be safe today? Is there gonna be another guy trying to do the same thing behind him?” said worker Alex Ramirez.

The thought also made Mayor Tom Leppert pause. He said he was concerned like everyone else.

“Clearly, this is a troubling sign of the world we all live in today and we are extremely grateful for the vigilance of the FBI. We have a strong working relationship with FBI officials, and they have kept us informed of their investigation. Thanks to their efforts, no one was ever in any danger," Leppert said in a statement to the press.

But perhaps one of the few people not shaken by the thought of a disaster in Dallas was Kenny Shaw. It’s his job to orchestrate emergency response for the city of Dallas

“I was both surprised and not surprised,” he said. “When you’re in my business, the police department or fire department, we don’t get complacent. We’re always concerned about those things.”

Had a bomb exploded, Shaw said the city nerve center would have been buzzing within 20 minutes and police and fire officials would have shown up within seconds.

There would have been evocations of the building and surrounding streets. Extra DART buses would help move people out of the area and a reverse 911 system would have kicked in to warn people of a potentially dangerous situation.

“I think the main lesson to learn here is that it can happen in Dallas, Texas and we just need to be always vigilant and always watching for these kinds of things,” Shaw said.