SIMULATED BIO-​​ATTACKS, “DIRTY NUKES” HIT TODAY

A ter­ror­ist group has set off a “dirty nuke” south of down­town Seattle. There are more than a hun­dred reported casu­al­ties so far.
In Chicago and Vancouver, hos­pi­tals are being flooded with patients report­ing mys­te­ri­ous, flu-​​like symp­toms. And the national stock­pile of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in Chicago is miss­ing.
How will fed­eral author­i­ties and local offi­cials respond? That’s what TOPOFF 2, a five-​​day, $16 mil­lion, 8,500-person anti-​​terror sim­u­la­tion, spon­sored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), aims to find out.
According to DHS, TOPOFF 2 (short for “Top Officials 2″), is “the most com­pre­hen­sive ter­ror­ism response exer­cise ever under­taken in the United States.” Designed to train Federal, State, and local respon­ders in putting together a coor­di­nated, inter­na­tional response to WMD attacks, TOPOFF 2 involves 19 Federal agen­cies and the American Red Cross, in coop­er­a­tion with par­tic­i­pants in Washington State, Illinois, Canada, and the Washington DC area.
While some experts see a great deal of value in the event — which begins today, and runs until May 16 — oth­ers aren’t so sure, Government Executive reports.

“It’s too big and too scripted,” said Frank Hoffman, a homeland-​​security con­sul­tant who was a top aide to the Hart-​​Rudman Commission on ter­ror­ism, which pre­sciently warned of ter­ror­ist attacks in February 2001. “There’s no tol­er­ance for fail­ure. There’s no risks being taken. It can’t just be all chore­o­graphed in advance. You don’t test any­thing.“
For starters, the biggest deci­sion mak­er­s­the pres­i­dent, his chief of staff, and his press sec­re­tary­have all made their deci­sions about the “cri­sis” ahead of time. Some top Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials even met to decide in advance how they would respond, and their stand-​​ins will merely be fol­low­ing a prepack­aged play­book. “You lose the spon­tane­ity; you lose that aspect of pres­sure which is so impor­tant,” said Stephen D. Prior, research direc­tor for the National Security Health Policy Center at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. “Decision-​​making under pres­sure is a very dif­fer­ent beast than decision-​​making with time on your hands, and with­out the pres­sure of every­one need­ing to know what your deci­sion is in order to take your next action.”

In any case, let’s hope the exer­cise is an improve­ment over TOPOFF 1. Reuters says the sim­u­la­tion, con­ducted three years ago, was plagued by com­mu­ni­ca­tions and coor­di­na­tion prob­lems between fed­eral, state and local offi­cials grap­pling with sim­u­lated dis­as­ters that could have killed hun­dreds.
In TOPOFF 1, Government Executive notes, Denver and Portsmouth, N.H. were hit by mock pneu­monic plague and mus­tard gas attacks, respec­tively.

But dif­fer­ences between the first exer­cise and this one abound. In the Colorado-​​New Hampshire sce­nario, par­tic­i­pants were not told where or what the threat would be. Instead, they were told only that it would hap­pen within a 10-​​day win­dow. So when the emer­gency res­cue teams in 2000 left the scene after tend­ing to the first vic­tim of this fic­ti­tious attack, they took the pneu­monic plague home with them and spread it. This time, said Hoffman, “if you tell them this is a drill with pneu­monic plague, every­one shows up with the bio suit on, and they don’t treat peo­ple like they have a cold.”

Similarly, “Silent Vector,” a recent exer­cise run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies gave only the broad­est hints in advance of what might go down dur­ing the sim­u­la­tion. Here’s my Wired News story on that event.
THERE’S MORE: The Seattle Times and Seattle P-​​I both have nice reports from the drill, includ­ing some great pic­tures.
AND MORE: Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune has a report on the city’s feaux bio-​​strike.

May 12th, 2003 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.