| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front |
| Terrorism Drill in Chicago and Seattle Next Week |
| 2003-05-06 |
| Edited for brevity. The cities of Chicago and Seattle will be the focus of a $16 million exercise next week to test how well the federal government would deal with simultaneous attacks by terrorists using biological and radiological weapons, the Bush administration said today. The exercise, said to be the largest domestic security drill ever carried out by the federal government, will be played out over five days starting on Monday and involve dozens of federal, state and local emergency-response agencies. In Chicago, emergency-response teams will be asked to pretend that they are dealing with the release of pneumonic plague, a deadly biological agent that is highly contagious. In Seattle, local agencies will be asked to respond to a scenario in which more than 100 people are injured in the explosion of a "dirty bomb," a weapon created when radiological material is wrapped around common explosives. The exercise is the second Congressionally mandated simulation of its type. The first was carried out in 2000, focused on imaginary terrorist attacks in Colorado and New Hampshire. That drill exposed huge communications and coordination problems among federal and local emergency-response teams. |
| Posted by:Dar |