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Bioterrorism drill ends in Chicago, Seattle

Emergency Management Alert, May 21, 2003

Emergency response workers were busy last week dealing with mock incidents in Chicago and Seattle as part of a $16 million national bioterrorism drill, the Associated Press reports.

The Department of Homeland Security ran the efforts, which involved more than 8,500 people from 100 federal, state, and local agencies, the American Red Cross, and the Canadian government.

Dubbed TopOff2, the drill began May 12 in Seattle with the simulated detonation of a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a parked car, while another simulated car bomb occurred in nearby Tacoma. The second incident was not a dirty bomb, but it did involve a hostage stand-off. About 200 firefighters and 60 police officers participated.

The 200-page script indicated that a fictitious plague had been sprayed across Chicago on May 12 but hadn't yet been detected. Volunteer patients began arriving at hospitals on May 13 and were seeking antibiotics by May 15.

On May 15 in Chicago, emergency workers dealt with a collapsed building and release of a chemical at a plant in suburban Bedford Park began the day. In the evening, there was a mock disaster at Midway Airport in which a medical helicopter apparently crashed into a plane full of passengers as it made an emergency landing. A few hours later, SWAT teams rushed a building while FBI agents dropped from helicopters as part of a raid on a fake biological lab and the round-up of pretend terrorists.

A full report on the week's drills is due in the fall.

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