TOM MANGOLD: Terror on the Tube

The Evening Standard ^ | November 19, 2002 | Tom Mangold

[MadIvan]

As London comes to terms with the threat of a terror attack, the Prime Minister has counselled that we should be vigilant on the Tube, and the emergency services and hospitals have given reassurances that the aftermath of an attack could be handled. We know we are living with a new level of threat: the difficulty lies in calculating a response that is not hysterical, but would meet any terror onslaught that uses chemical and biological weapons.

There is no hard evidence that any attack on the Tube is likely, let alone imminent - but with the UK now identified by al Qaeda as a target, it is prudent to prepare for the worst. London Underground's first stop as it reviews safety procedures should be New York.

When terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction were first taken seriously as far back as the mid-Sixties, the US Army's Special Operations Branch from Fort Detrick (home of the military's biological warfare programmes) was asked to establish the vulnerability of New York's underground railways.

The army spent four days testing the effects of a harmless anthrax simulant both from inside the tunnels and from the streets outside the stations. The results were so horrific that most remain classified after almost half a century.

Soldiers posing as passengers dropped light bulbs filled with the fake anthrax onto the tracks and measured how the bacteria would travel through the draughty tunnels. The consequences proved that an entire city could be contaminated with small amounts of bacteria. Strong wind flows and absence of natural light (which kills bacteria) are the perfect environment for the survival and distribution of most kinds of lethal bacteria and viral agents.

A mere 10 grams of dried bacteria (anthrax or tular aemia - Saddam has quantities of both) would infect hundreds of thousands of passengers in a very short time. Those waiting on platforms or inside trains would inhale more than 10 infectious doses after just five minutes.

Because London's Tube system is deliberately designed not to be airtight, but rather to allow ventilation to and from the street, entrances to Tubes and ventilation outlets would allow the escape of airborne gases and germs. Bugs blown out of the Underground would soon infect the city.

David Kelly, one of Britain's top biological warfare experts, doubts whether there are any effective counter-measures in the event of an attack short of spraying every inch of London's Tube system and all the stations either with formaldehyde or newly developed antibacterial foams. This would be hugely expensive and time-consuming.

The British military do, in fact, have standby plans for such an attack, rehearsed in great secrecy. They div ide the living into three rather brutally named groups, "walkers, floppers and goners". In the chaos, little could be done for the last two groups. Dealing with panic in the streets and attacks on pharmacies and hospitals would soon require savage crowd-control methods. A more complete strategy for response was developed in the late 1990s in New York by Jerry Hauer, the man behind New York's Office of Emergency Management.

Hauer had sole responsibility for dealing with biochemical attacks on his city, and his planning is still in force there today - and widely consulted as a model for other cities.

A couple of years ago, representatives from the Met came to his 20th-floor headquarters in Wall Street to gather advice from him on dealing with a chemical/biological attack in a confined space.

Hauer's disaster scenarios were deemed by many to be scaremongering. They look less far-fetched these days. What he did see very clearly was that the secret of effective terror prevention is to have tested the worst options and prepared a planned and strategic, not just an emergency, response.

In this spirit, there is much that London can learn from New York's careful preparation for such an attack. Sensitive detectors could be placed in vulnerable locations and specifically throughout the London Tube system. London could imitate Hauer and train 4,000 police, fire and emergency units and 1,500 doctors and nurses in how to deal with biochemical attacks.

They should all, as first responders, be issued with special protective masks containing high efficiency particulate absorbing filters. If those on the front line of the emergency treatment fall ill, the battle is lost.

But the biggest problem by far would be just knowing that an attack has taken place. Suicide bombers can take a holiday on this one, as terrorists may do their deadly work and walk away before the outbreak even begins.

So, critically, doctors and nurses need careful training to recognise the difference between a common flu outbreak and the first symptoms of anthrax or even smallpox, which are similar.

Finally, the capital should consider spending some £1 million, as New York did, on a couple of mobile emergency trailers filled with containment vessels that can isolate, analyse and transport samples of suspected germs or chemicals. The vehicles also carry antidotes and medicines. They would be the capital's front-line tanks after a bacterial invasion.

We should also be talking to the pharmaceutical houses to acquire and stockpile millions of doses of antibiotics and antidotes (the Americans keep them in huge mobile refrigerated trucks at secret locations). None of this would halt all the terrible consequences of an attack, but it would certainly alleviate it.

When the Home Office held a major biological attack simulated scenario at the Greater Manchester police training school, the operation, codenamed "Firestorm", involved a terrorist attack using anthrax. The exercise apparently ended with a huge argument between the police and the local authorities on whether to evacuate 200,000 people from the city.

The official conclusions - perhaps wisely - remain a guarded secret. Now that the stakes are higher, we can't afford to take chances. Terror is best countered by being prepared to face the worst.

Tom Mangold is the author of Plague Wars, a book on biological warfare

[David Hunter]

UK History isn't bad... Classic FM Newsnight is the best source of news however in terms of broadcast media.

I'll remember that. Farewell.