Towns across Northern Ireland are not well enough equipped to cope with any major new terrorist attack, Omagh bomb victims claimed today.
Emergency planning and evacuation procedures are dangerously low compared with other countries and cities, relatives of those killed in the massacre believe.
Mr Mark Breslin, whose wife Geraldine died in the blast, has spent five years studying worldwide preparations and warned that the authorities have been left behind.
"Future lives could be saved if we had a root and branch approach to preparing for terrorist attack," he said. "I believe Northern Ireland is not as well prepared as the experience and history here should dictate.
"Other countries seem to be further along this path in a shorter space of time."
Mr Breslin has compiled a dossier he says backs his view, including readily accessible plans for parts of the United States, Australia, India and other UK regions.
His work formed part of a package presented to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in Belfast by the Omagh families as part of demands for a public inquiry on both sides of the Irish border into the bombing.
They want Chief Commissioner Brice Dickson and his staff to back their call for a tribunal into events surrounding the August 1998 'Real IRA' attack which killed 29 people, along with unborn twins.
"Getting them on board would be a powerful weapon in our armoury," said Mr Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was murdered in the bombing.
Pressure has intensified ever since Police Ombudsman Mrs Nuala O'Loan's damning assessment of the original investigation.
Relatives of the dead insist both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Garda still have a lot of questions to answer over informants, levels of co-operation, and whether all terror suspects were properly questioned.
A big part of their continued frustration is based on how Omagh was evacuated on the day of the explosion. Although the families do not blame the officers on the ground, they claim there was a lack of basic training over bomb threat procedures.
Mr Breslin cited a plan prepared by Lincoln city centre and distributed to shopowners and businesses in the area.
"I am not aware of what Belfast, for example, has in place," he said. "These are public safety issues and yet they have been wrapped up in secrecy and security."
Although local councils in other UK regions are bound by law to produce and publish emergency plans, it is understood Northern Ireland has no such requirements.
PA