Many of the patrol cars, firetrucks and ambulances South Seattle residents will see or hear today won't be responding to real emergency calls.

The drill, dubbed Topoff 2, for Top Officials, is designed to test the mettle of local and national emergency-response teams to the detonation of a "dirty bomb" in South Seattle.

The emergency-response exercise is set to begin just before noon when participants posing as terrorists will explode a simulated "dirty bomb" near the old Rainier Brewery on Airport Way South. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive that blasts radioactive material over a wide area.

Hundreds of firefighters, police officers, medics, hospital workers and emergency-response personnel from as many 18 agencies, including some Canadian agencies at the U.S.-Canada border, are expected to participate in the five-day drill. Bellevue and other Eastside communities will participate in varying degrees in the exercise.

Also participating will be 100 high-school students recruited to play Seattle residents who need to be evacuated after the bomb blast.

Residents of Ballard and Magnolia may also see some peripheral activity associated with the drill in their neighborhoods.

A similar mock disaster is being staged in Chicago involving a bio-terrorist attack.

The primary exercises will run continuously for 36 hours today and tomorrow with some officials participating in clean-up drills that follow.

The final day of the drill will be used to critique the event and to look at what worked and what didn't.

The staged events in Seattle and Chicago are the first large-scale counter-terrorism exercises since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The congressionally mandated drills, each of which is expected to cost about $2.5 million, are aimed at testing the ability of local, state, regional and federal authorities to handle a terrorist attack and to identify needed improvements.

The first Topoff exercises were held in New Hampshire and Colorado three years ago and revealed a few problems in the emergency responses.

In New Hampshire, communications broke down among state, local and federal agencies. In Colorado, where a mock plague scenario had been set up, the health-care system was overwhelmed.

Seattle officials say they have spent months preparing for this event and expect the drill to go smoothly. Still, they say they will welcome whatever lessons may be learned.

Officials Prepare for Bioterror Drill

By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

May 12, 2003, 7:30 AM CDT

SEATTLE -- This week, officials across the nation will have their hands full with an imaginary "dirty bomb" in Seattle and the fake threat of a biological agent in Chicago -- both part of the most extensive bioterrorism drill in the nation's history.

The five-day drill, set to begin Monday, is aimed at testing the ability of local, state and federal authorities to handle terrorist attacks. It is the first large-scale counterterrorism exercise since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

The exercises, which are being spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security, will cost an estimated $16 million and involve more than 8,500 people from 100 federal, state and local agencies, the American Red Cross and the Canadian government.

The scenarios involve two separate attacks -- one nuclear, one biological -- by two cells of a terrorist group.

On Monday afternoon, Seattle officials were set to respond to an explosion causing more than 100 "casualties." Under the scenario, radiation was to be detected near the blast's crater, triggering a response from federal officials.

Over the next few days, a number of "patients" were due to show up at hospitals in the Chicago area suffering from flu-like symptoms. In the script, the terrorist group had released a deadly plague in aerosol form on Saturday. More cases were to be reported across the nation and Vancouver, British Columbia, prompting the coordination of officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Healing the victims of the bomb blast and cleaning up their homes was to take place in Seattle and a raid on the fictional terrorist group -- dubbed GLODO for the exercise -- was scheduled.

The scenarios later in the week involve the distribution of antibiotic stockpiles, the handling of an increasing level of patients suffering from the biological agent and discovery of the sites where the material was produced. In Chicago, emergency workers will also grapple with a fictional airplane crash.

A detailed, 200-page scenario has been written for the drill, which officials said will be as realistic-looking as possible. Stand-ins will portray President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and even press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has said he isn't worried that the security exercise may cause panic, noting that the event has received extensive publicity locally and warnings have appeared in newspaper ads.

Some details have been kept from the participants in order to make the exercise more realistic. The Office of Domestic Preparedness has been planning the event -- dubbed "Topoff 2" for "top officials" -- since shortly after the first such drill, "Topoff 1," three years ago in Denver and New Hampshire.

Participants will include governors, mayors, county executives and other elected officials as well as police officers, firefighters, hospital personnel and other emergency responders.

"Protection against terrorism requires that organizations at every level of government and in the private sector work together in partnership to prepare for events and deal with their consequences," U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said in a news release. "Topoff 2 provides the opportunity to test our preparedness, and at the same time identify ways to improve response in the future."

Hundreds of evaluators will watch the exercise and report their findings for later study. Whatever lessons are learned will likely be applied to earthquakes and other natural disasters, as well as terrorist attacks, officials said.

TOPOFF 2" - Week-Long National Combating Terrorism Exercise Begins May 12, 2003

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

May 5, 2003

Beginning May 12 at 3:00 p.m. EDT, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of State, in cooperation with Federal, State, local, and Canadian partners, will undertake a five-day, full-scale exercise and simulation of how the Nation would respond in the event of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack.

The exercise consists of simulated attacks in the Chicago and Seattle metropolitan areas. The State of Washington, King County, and the City of Seattle respond to a hypothetical explosion containing radioactive material. The State of Illinois, Cook, Lake, DuPage and Kane Counties, and the City of Chicago respond to a covert release of a biological agent. Nineteen Federal agencies and the American Red Cross will become involved during the five-day exercise. The National Capital Region, including the District of Columbia, State of Maryland, and Commonwealth of Virginia, are participating in the first day of the exercise.

The Government of Canada, including the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver, are also engaged in exercise play. Canada's participation in TOPOFF 2 is in keeping with the commitment to conduct joint exercises, as outlined in Point 30 of the Smart Border Declaration Action Plan. Approximately 18 Federal departments and agencies with counter-terrorism and consequence management roles are involved, as well as the province of British Columbia. Canadian participation is coordinated by the Department of the Solicitor General and the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness. Canada and the United States have a history of conducting joint counterterrorism exercises dating back to 1989.

The exercise consists of simulated WMD incidents; there will be no release of any actual agents. While the exercise scenario, extent of damage, and level of threat are based on a hypothetical situation and are not intended as a forecast of future terrorist-related events, they do reflect the current threat to the United States.

"Protection against terrorism requires that organizations at every level of government and in the private sector work together in partnership to prepare for events and deal with their consequences," said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. "TOPOFF 2 provides the opportunity to test our preparedness, and at the same time identify ways to improve response in the future."

The exercise will enable top officials and response personnel to practice different courses of action, gain and maintain situational awareness, and deploy appropriate resources. Top Federal officials, State governors, county executives, mayors, city managers, along with State and local responders, will be key participants and play active roles throughout the exercise.

"TOPOFF 2 embodies the spirit of interagency and international cooperation that surfaced in the aftermath of September 11th," stated Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "It is this cooperation that will help defeat terrorism worldwide."

"The Smart Border Declaration laid out an aggressive road map to secure and strengthen our borders. The commitment to conduct joint exercises is an important part of that agreement," said Deputy Prime Minister John Manley. "TOPOFF 2 is an excellent opportunity to collaborate with our American partners, test our response plans, and further enhance our joint response capabilities."

Over the five days of the exercise, Federal, State, local, and Canadian participants will be engaged in unclassified and classified round-the-clock exercise play.

The goals of TOPOFF 2 are to improve the nation's capacity to manage extreme events; create broader frameworks for the operation of expert crisis and consequence management systems; validate authorities, strategies, plans, policies, procedures, and protocols; and build a sustainable, systematic national exercise program to support the national strategy for homeland security.

The TOPOFF 2 exercise series is overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP), which provides training, equipment, exercises, and technical assistance to the Nation's first responders, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State/Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

For more information visit the TOPOFF 2 online pressroom at www.topoff2media.net.

Disaster, no — this is only test

Emergency will be simulated in Chicago, Seattle

By John McCormick, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter David Heinzmann contributed to this report

May 11, 2003

By Sunday morning, Chicago will be in the early stages of a mock terror attack as officials use an imaginary cloud of pneumonic plague to test whether the area is prepared to handle the real thing.

According to a scripted scenario, the disaster will unfold over coming days and reach a crescendo on Thursday, when emergency workers will be swamped with made-up disasters, including a plane crash at Midway Airport, a building collapse and a panicked citizenry elbowing for medicine to treat the plague.

In a parallel drill, Seattle will face the fictional detonation of a radiological "dirty bomb," prompting authorities there to close roads, set up shelters and admit victims to hospitals.

The exercise, at a taxpayer expense of $16 million, is designed to provide emergency preparedness officials with experience on how to deal with separate but almost simultaneous terrorist attacks.

Called TOPOFF 2, short for "top officials," the drill is congressionally mandated and sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. Similar exercises were held in May 2000 in Denver, Portsmouth, N.H., and Washington, D.C.

Officials say disruptions to traffic and residents here should be minimal, although a few parts of the drill are expected to create some strange images around the metropolitan area.

Authorities say travelers and residents near Midway Airport, for example, should expect to see smoke rising into the sky early Thursday evening, as a commercial plane crash is simulated there.

Incoming and outgoing pilots and passengers will be advised of the drill. Fliers printed in English, Arabic and Spanish are being distributed to area residents.

Other strange scenes might include workers at area hospitals wearing more masks around emergency rooms (to protect them from the imaginary plague) and large numbers of emergency vehicles at certain drill venues.

But most of the exercise is expected to be invisible to the public, taking place either only on paper or behind closed doors at city, county, state and federal command centers around the region. That means the public may not know where the holes in the system are for months.

"The federal government will come back and give us some kind of input," said Cortez Trotter, Chicago's emergency response chief.

Authorities will allow reporters to view some of the simulations, but they are blocking access to communications and strategy sessions that will largely determine just how successful local, state and federal authorities are in dealing with the make-believe terror attacks.

Larry Langford, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said reporters won't be allowed to see any glitches firsthand because authorities don't want the information transmitted to potential terrorists.

Real reporters will also be prohibited from recording dialogue between emergency workers and "VNN" network television crews, actors who will pretend to be reporters at some of the disaster locations. Langford said authorities don't want footage of city workers acting out responses to an imaginary terrorist attack being accidentally broadcast or falling into the wrong hands.

Officials won't even confirm how many volunteer victims are participating in the drill in the Chicago area. The best guesses are between several hundred and 1,200, based on past statements by those involved in organizing the exercise.

Some of those who will show up at hospitals with supposed cases of pneumonic plague will carry pieces of paper saying they represent five or 10 other patients, while other hospitals will simply have patient information faxed to them.

Federal officials say Chicago and Seattle were selected for the mock exercise because they're large, sprawling metropolitan areas where local officials volunteered to host a drill.

A total of 19 federal agencies, as well as state and county health, transportation and emergency management departments will be involved in the Chicago-area exercise. Canadian authorities will also participate in a simulated international spread of the plague, leading to cross-border efforts to coordinate an epidemiological investigation.

The participants in the drill will include top local and state officials, police officers, firefighters and other "first responders" who would be called to help in the event of a terrorist attack. Several hundred evaluators will also watch the script play out, looking for failures and successes to report in a later study.

News accounts about the earlier drill in Denver, which also featured an attack by pneumonic plague, described a sometimes-chaotic response, with government agencies jostling for control while weary public health officials wasted hours on excessively large conference calls. Radios among the various federal, state and local agencies also weren't compatible.

In Chicago, the drill calls for hospital officials to diagnose the plague on Tuesday and send samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to confirm that the deadly, biological agent has been released here.

On Wednesday, the volume of pretend hospital admissions will escalate and the imaginary terrorist group, called GLODO, will take credit for the biological attack.

By Thursday, the busiest of the days planned for the drill, the Strategic National Stockpile of pharmaceuticals will deploy medication for sometimes large and panicked crowds at inoculation sites in Chicago, Bridgeview, Wheaton, Aurora and Lake Bluff.

Besides the script for the bio-terror assault in the Chicago area, other side events, including a hazardous materials incident and a building collapse Thursday morning in Bedford Park, are planned.

In addition to the planned events, the scenario calls for a few surprises that are not part of the script. That could include something like a huge imaginary fire that would draw resources away from the terrorism response and put added stress on communications channels.

Altogether, several hundred emergency workers will be involved. The workers will be off-duty police officers, firefighters and other emergency personnel who will be paid by the federal government.

A spokesman said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge might visit Chicago late in the week to observe the drill and perhaps participate in a Thursday briefing for reporters.

Jean Przybylek, vice president of operations for Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said detecting a case of the plague during winter would typically be more difficult because the flulike symptoms would seem less out of place than in the spring. She said she expects the drill will test how well hospitals are able to communicate with each other and transfer potentially large numbers of patients.

One thing that's certain about the drill's script: Authorities will nail the bad guys at a Southwest Side building that supposedly has been converted to a biological lab. The arrests are expected Thursday evening, within days of the terrorist attack--something that hasn't always happened in real life.

- - -

Drill puts focus on pneumonic plague

Health officials in the Chicago area will cope with the imagined release of pneumonic plague as the main crisis in this week's terrorism drill.

Some basics about the plague:

- Caused by a bacterium found in rodents and their fleas.

- Occurs when the bacterium infects the lungs. (Bubonic plague occurs when the same bacterium infects the blood.)

- Spread by droplets in the breath or cough of an infected person.

- First signs are fever, headache, weakness and rapidly developing pneumonia.

- Treatment includes 7 days of antibiotics, preferably beginning within 24 hours of the first symptoms.

- There is no vaccine.

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