Was the traffic chaos that developed during January’s big snowstorm a sign that the Washington region is ill-prepared to keep its citizens informed in the event of a terrorist attack? Maybe! At least, that was the conclusion reached by several local leaders yesterday during a Department of Homeland Security briefing.

The briefing was conducted during a meeting of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments — an independent, nonprofit body comprised of officials from 21 local governments, Maryland and Virginia state legislators, and U.S. Congressmembers — during which DHS talked about the death of the old color-coded warning system and the institution of the new National Terrorism Advisory System. But the Examiner reports that not everyone on the council was thrilled with the new information sharing system:

“How do we get to the point where we can give a single message? We surely didn’t do that on Jan. 26,” asked D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson.

Merni Fitzgerald, Fairfax County’s director of public affairs, stressed that the message given to the public has to be consistent.

“We should be giving out the common message in all of our different venues,” she said. “We shouldn’t be tweeting one thing and putting something else on our hot line. We need to give out the same information to make it less confusing.”

In addition to the notification systems we wrote about earlier this week, the council is reportedly considering using newspapers, radio, television, text messaging, reverse 9-1-1 and social networking sites to get a singular message out there in the event of an emergency.

Sounds great, as long as us residents actually get them less than an hour after such alerts expire.