Terror In N.J.? It's Only A Test

(AP)  With busses overturned, emergency workers in full hazardous-material protective suiting and reporters swarming the scene of a supposed chemical explosion, it could have made a fine TV drama on biological weapons. Or a terrorist attack.

But as hospitals clog with people displaying flu symptoms, staff can breathe a sign of relief: this is only a test.

The biggest anti-terrorism drill ever held in the United States got under way Monday with a mock biological attack in New Jersey and a simulated chemical-weapons explosion in Connecticut.

Named TOPOFF 3, the $16 million, weeklong exercise is meant to find weak spots in the nation's emergency planning.

"We will intentionally stress our emergency response systems to the point of failure so we can repair them," said Matt Mayer of the U.S. Homeland Security Department.

Although no real weapons or bio-agents are used, state and local officials are supposed to respond as if it is the real thing, sending ambulances to hospitals and flooding the area with investigators and emergency workers in haz-mat suits.

"It's a test of how well people are communicating with each other and whether the right people are getting pulled into this exercise," said Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for New Jersey's Office of Counterterrorism.

The biological attack drill started in New Jersey at the Hillside campus of Kean University with officers swarming around the scene of a mock auto wreck. Reporters were given a simulated briefing and told that the vehicles did not match their registrations.

Doctors tried to connect the incident to a patient who had been admitted to a hospital with "flu-like symptoms." More "victims" of the supposed biological attack headed to emergency rooms, and state health officials started zeroing in on pneumonic plague as the likely cause.

In Connecticut, federal officials staged a mock chemical weapons explosion on the New London waterfront. Buses were overturned to create a realistic scene, and volunteers played victims of the attack.

All told, more than 10,000 people will participate in the drill, including exercises that will involve officials in Canada and England. More than 8,500 people took part in similar exercises in Seattle and Chicago in 2003.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the drill will shift to hospitals, where hundreds of mock patients will show up in various degrees of medical crisis. Some will be treated in emergency rooms, while others might undergo outdoor decontamination.



By Wayne Parry