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NJ kicks off weeklong anti-terror drill

Emergency Management Alert, April 5, 2005

The largest United States anti-terror drill ever undertaken started this week in New Jersey, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

The drill began with police officers in Union County investigating a fake car accident while health officials watch for a fake biological attack.

"What seems to have been a typically innocuous event will have growing ramifications. It is going to end up testing our health and law enforcement systems throughout the state of New Jersey," Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for the state's Office of Counterterrorism, told the AP. "It's exciting to finally get this underway."

The weeklong drill, called TOPOFF 3, simulates a bioterror attack in New Jersey's Union County and later spreads to a fake chemical attack in New London, CT.

U.S. Homeland Security officials will monitor the drills from a command center in Washington.

Even though this isn't a real attack, national, state, and local officials must respond as if it is, which includes flooding areas with investigators and first responders arriving in haz-mat suits, ambulances dispatched to hospitals across the state, and mass casualties lining up outside emergency rooms.

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