Preparing for the worst

The Sunday Age (Melbourne) ^ | 13th November 2005 | Paul Heinrichs

[naturalman1975]

As Melburnians go about their business tomorrow, a panel of key emergency response people will imagine bombs exploding and people dying on our streets. They will then have to decide what to do about it. Paul Heinrichs explores a nightmare scenario and meets one man who believes we should be better prepared.

Imagine it. Two 30-kilogram bombs hidden in bicycle panniers are detonated in rapid succession at the landmark new Spencer Street Station. Ear-splitting explosions, then muffled groans from all directions. Chaos.

For what seems like seconds, the spectacular wave-form metal roof appears to lift off its supports and hang in the air, before descending, thousands of square metres of it, with a gigantic crump of compressed air.

Train brakes squeal as drivers seek to avert casualties. The sound of tonnes of breaking glass mingles with the screams of commuters who scramble to escape the smoke and dust billowing out across the road.

Windows are blown out as far away as the police headquarters in the Flinders Street World Trade Centre, and debris rains down on Southgate, where some are entering and some leaving the casino. And this is only the start of it . . .

It is 8.45am on a weekday and, as W. H. Auden once put it prophetically in his Brussels poem Gare du Midi, we are in ". . . a city/ Whose terrible future may have just arrived".

Hypothetically, terrorism is breaking out in Melbourne. The attacks come in the sort of multi-pronged modus operandi that is the hallmark of al-Qaeda's hand elsewhere. How would we handle it?

Tomorrow, former SAS officer and terrorism analyst Adam Lawrence will take the Australian Urban Transit Security Conference through a detailed terrorism scenario.

Without notice, a panel of Melbourne's key emergency response people will be asked to spell out how they would deal with such a scenario under the extensive existing planning for emergencies by many agencies.

For security reasons, Lawrence talks The Sunday Age through a separate scenario - an attack on a number of transport-related targets at Melbourne's western end.

Lawrence is the director, terrorism risk and security, at Ross Campbell and Associates, Australia's leading crisis management and recovery consultancy, and a member of the Risk Management Institution of Australasia.

He came up with a theoretical situation consistent with al-Qaeda's intent to achieve mass casualties (rather than infrastructure damage), national/international economic harm and to discredit government and its entities.

Although it may take several hours, if not days, for authorities to fully comprehend what happened and how it was perpetrated, these are the key elements of the scenario for our fictitious terrorists:

WHO

- Four male suicide bombers with a tactical "facilitator".

- All of Caucasian appearance - suggesting Western Islamic converts or of possible Uzbek origin.

- No one would claim responsibility for several days but authorities are quick to realise the possible link to al-Qaeda.

HOW/WHERE

- Home-made/improvised explosive devices.

- Spencer Street Station (two bombs packed in mountain bike panniers/day packs) - detonated simultaneously as passengers disembark.

- Intersection of Flinders and Spencer streets (bomb in motorbike courier pack/box, timed to disrupt response from the Victoria Police headquarters at the World Trade Centre).

- Australian Stock Exchange building on the corner of King and Collins streets (placed in a dry cleaner's van parked at kerbside). Early witness reports suggest the blast originated in passing tram.

On Friday morning, I walk Adam Lawrence through his nightmare scenario at the western end of the city to elucidate points from which something might be learned.

We begin at Spencer Street Station, where workmen are unloading the huge plate glass windows that, if terrorism had been factored in, might usefully have been coated with a blast-resistant new film available abroad - reportedly being used in Australia's embassy in Jakarta.

The effect on the roof, Lawrence thinks, would "be like a can of baked beans that explodes in a campfire - it pops the lid, it buckles, it's burnt and you imagine it peeling back. You are talking significant forces here and they've got to go somewhere."

But it is flying glass, more than anything, says Lawrence, that devastates people beyond the immediate blast zone.

The explosions themselves, perhaps combined with flying shrapnel, could be expected to kill or severely wound people all along the platforms at peak hour - just as happened in attacks on trains or railway systems overseas.

He says the three available responses of people - "fight, freeze or flight" - need to be understood and only thorough rehearsals of evacuations and post-bomb procedures could refine the systematic knowledge.

From his understandings, the mobile phone system would break down under overload, and the number of calls to 000 would be "incomprehensible". The network congestion would make the communication infrastructure at the western end of the city untenable. "That's a key learning. It certainly was in London."

His scenario includes another bomb going off a block away on a motorbike - a common tactic - to act as a distraction or to disrupt the emergency response, just up the road from police headquarters. Emergency planners need to be aware of the likelihood of secondary blasts, he says.

Al-Qaeda attacks often feature simultaneous blasts, and also use the technique of drawing crowds of people to a scene and then blowing them up with secondary explosions.

"It's a common mujahideen tactic that was refined in the days of the Soviet Afghan occupation, where (Osama) bin Laden made a name for himself and became a legend in that community," says Lawrence.

"I saw it personally with some of the Uzbek and Chechen fighters. It has also been used in the Chechen campaign - the jihad against the former Soviet states there."

The main attack happens putatively at a couple of minutes before 9am outside the Australian Stock Exchange building in Collins Street, where a dry-cleaning van packed with perhaps several hundred kilograms of explosives would shatter it and the Rialto complex across the road.

As we watch, small vans of all sorts pull in and out from the kerb, and the news vendor goes about his business as usual.

In Lawrence's view, the blast effects would be felt as far away as Spring Street - "glass shards and flying debris would be the major hazards, based on learning from the IRA bomb in the Bishopsgate financial district of London in the early '90s.

"In terms of infrastructure protection, use of bollards, access control - none of that matters in this case. The van could just drive by and detonate. We saw the graphic pictures of an attack in Iraq recently on the outskirts of the green zone. It was a cement mixer."

Lawrence includes the Stock Exchange building as a major economic target, based on the fact that al-Qaeda targetted major British interests in attacking the HSBC Bank in Istanbul on November 20, 2003, with a car bomb that shattered the facade, killed 26 people and wounded 450.

He envisages the building might need to be demolished as a consequence. "As far as loss of life, I wouldn't even put a figure on it, but it would be massive."

In this case, he says, the only thing that could be done was for intelligence agencies, here and abroad, to work with law enforcement agencies in seeking to disrupt and prevent these events taking place.

"Secondly, it was important to recognise that no amount of regulation of fertilisers or other materials could prevent a determined terrorist group making an improvised explosive out of standard household commodities," he says.

"Essentially, reducing vulnerability to everyone depends on procedures. If something like this happens, get under cover. After the first few blasts, don't wander out into the street, or look through the window to see what's going on. Get down in the basement car park if possible.

"The best thing for people co-ordinating a response for other people's safety is to listen to the radio. It's from that information you will be able to make a judgement call on whether to come out. My advice is to stay behind hard cover for an hour or two before coming out to see what's going on."

Lawrence is using his unique skills in understanding the common threads of al-Qaeda attacks to advise businesses and government bodies on "best-practice preparedness for a worst-case scenario".

He would like to see simple public information for people in office buildings and schools - even as little as five or 10 steps - in case of terrorist bombings, perhaps as part of a checklist on the Federal Government's national security website.

"In a matter of thinking, it's taking us back to the days of World War II in London. There was the threat of air raids, which happened all the time. There were procedures in place; we can learn from those days.

"We need to have mature and open, honest debate and consideration of what the effects of such an attack might be here in Melbourne, and come up with some pretty simple strategies to reduce one's vulnerability."

At 36, living in Melbourne with a wife who works in the city, and children in the suburbs, he also has a big stake in alerting authorities and businesses to glitches and deficiencies in our preparedness systems.

"I'm not satisfied, as a concerned member of the community, that our political leaders are getting necessarily the best advice," he says. "Sometimes, in watching the news or reading papers, I become quite frustrated because of my understanding of the nature of the threat. What I'm arguing for is that operational or contingency responses in protecting people and infrastructure should coincide with that understanding of the threat."

In particular, he hopes there will be a rehearsal for a potential multiple terrorist bombing as a component of the counter-terrorism training in Melbourne before the Commonwealth Games.

"I hope our political leaders are getting the best advice on that, and if I can encourage simple tools to be put on public domain on the internet for everyone's benefit, all the better."

But Inspector Matthew Anderson, from the counter-terrorism co-ordination unit of the Victoria Police, believes the state's preparedness is already better than anywhere else in the world - and would cope under even this much strain.

Last year he visited the United States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, France and Israel under a Churchill Fellowship to look at critical infrastructure protection, and says he discovered Victoria was well ahead of the pack in terms of co-ordination and planning between agencies.

Ready or not, it seems Melbourne has overcome that peculiar parochialism so lampooned by poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe in Melbourne, where: "Elsewhere/Victims are bleeding, sun is beating down/On patriot, guerilla, refugee./We see the newsreels when we dine in town."

Drilling home the terror fight November 30, 1983 A bungled hostage rescue exercise at Melbourne's Sheraton Hotel brings the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to public attention. Guests and staff are alarmed by the masked, armed team, while assistant manager James Swift surveyed the damage.
Cost: $750,000
September 5, 1996 Search and rescue taskforce formed to deal with natural disasters and a possible terrorist attack in light of the Oklahoma bombing.
July 7, 1999 Victoria's Special Operations Group holds anti-terrorism exercise, in preparation for Olympic events in Melbourne.
July 19, 2000 Police hold two-day exercise before several major events, including the World Economic Forum, AFL grand final, Olympic soccer and visits by the Prime Minister and Nelson Mandela.
June 25, 2002 Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and the military hold a three-day test of the National Anti-Terrorist Plan. It simulates chemical, biological, radiological and conventional attacks.
August 2, 2002 First search and rescue exercise since September 11 attacks is held in Queensland. It simulates a massive building collapse.
December 9, 2002 Ambulance officials are concerned that crews lack the equipment and training to deal with chemical, biological and radiological attacks.
January 12, 2003 CityLink closes the Burnley Tunnel to test new cameras and run an evacuation exercise.
October 18, 2003 ASIS agents have military training on Swan Island, near Queenscliff. This marks a reversal of a 20-year policy preventing the spies from carrying weapons or conducting paramilitary operations, implemented after the Sheraton Hotel debacle.
March 18, 2004 Victoria Police counter-terrorism specialists partici pate in a four- day national exercise to test readiness for biological, radiological, chemical and conventional attacks.
April 7, 2004 A large emergency response exercise is staged at Melbourne Airport.
April 5, 2005 The military, police and other agencies stage a joint state- federal anti-terrorism exercise at several sites around Melbourne.
October 17, 2005 State and federal authorities launch "Mercury 05", an anti-terrorism exercise in preparation for the Commonwealth Games. More than 3000 people participate across the country.