Rescuers Rehearse Terrorism-Response Roles

As a crowd waits for a military air show to begin, a bomb suddenly explodes. An invisible gas seeps over the screaming crowd. Some drop dead. Others stagger off. Many fall to the ground, writhing in agony and moaning for help.

This hypothetical scenario of a sarin gas attack was enacted Tuesday at Van Nuys Airport in the largest full-scale decontamination drill ever held in the United States and the biggest joint law enforcement anti-terrorist exercise in the history of Los Angeles, the FBI said.

More than 2,000 law enforcement, military, health and safety personnel from federal, state and local agencies took part in the exercise, sponsored by the Department of Defense, to train emergency workers to deal with chemical-weapon terrorism.

A “bomb” went off beside an aircraft apron where 200 Marines stood in civilian clothes, playing the role of civilian spectators. As a cloud of whitish, vanilla-scented “gas” wafted over them, firefighters, medical personnel and other waiting rescue workers rehearsed how they would handle such an incident.

If a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction ever occurs, it isn’t enough that individual agencies know what to do--they also need to coordinate their efforts, organizers said.

“We are learning to act as one when such an act occurs,” said FBI spokesman Ramiro Escudero.

Los Angeles participants included the LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department, the city and county fire departments and the county Department of Health Services. Federal and state participants included the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Public Health, the California Highway Patrol and the California Office of Emergency Services.

Entire Coordination Process Covered

The four-day exercise covers the entire process of how all the agencies would come together to counter a chemical attack, said Suzanne Fournier, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army’s Domestic Preparedness Training Program, which coordinates such simulations nationwide.

On Monday, the first day of the exercise, law enforcement officials were given a simulated terrorist threat and conducted intelligence-gathering.

After Tuesday’s drills, the agencies today will rehearse management of the aftermath of a chemical attack, including environmental cleanup and providing shelters for survivors, Fournier said. The exercise ends Thursday with performance evaluations.

Under a perfect, cloudless sky, 200 T-shirt-and-jeans-clad Marines from Camp Pendleton played the role of sarin gas victims. Moments after the “attack,” fire engines--which had been waiting nearby--arrived with lights flashing.

A fire hose mounted on a ladder stretching from a firetruck began dousing the “victims” with water. Firefighters dragged “survivors” away from the “gas” area and checked on motionless, sprawled out bodies.

In real life, sarin gas--which attacks the central nervous system and can cause instant death--is odorless and colorless, Fournier said.

The firefighters, joined by hazardous-materials teams in protective suits, and a Marine Corps chemical warfare unit ran through the full decontamination process that included having survivors strip to their shorts and rinsing them with a solution of bleach and water in a nearby tent.

Those playing the most severely injured were carried away in long metal baskets that would allow them to be easily hosed off, organizers said.

Growing Awareness of Terrorist Threat

Nearby, law enforcement officers cordoned off the area to keep others out of the “contaminated” space. Elsewhere around Los Angeles, other emergency-response personnel, from 911 operators to doctors and nurses in several hospitals, were rehearsing the steps they would go through to handle such a crisis, organizers said.

The Los Angeles exercise is the 13th held nationwide since 1997, when the Department of Defense set out to prepare the nation for terrorist acts involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

“In the past . . . we always thought these things didn’t happen on U.S. soil, that they only happen somewhere else. But that isn’t the case,” Fournier said. “There’s a growing awareness of a threat of nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism in the United States, particularly since the Tokyo subway [gas] attack, [and] the bombing[s] in Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center and the American embassies in Africa.”

Van Nuys Airport was chosen because of its accessibility, said Michael Freeman, chief of the county Fire Department. It has a large concrete apron that was unused, and its location allowed for a large gathering without disrupting air or street traffic.

‘As Ready as Any City in the World Can Be’

Los Angeles agencies have had many years’ practice in cooperating to deal with natural disasters such as earthquakes, organizers said.

“We’ve already learned to work together to a large extent,” said LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba, and the exercise allows the agencies to “get some of the bugs out.”

“Los Angeles has been preparing for [such an] attack for a number of years,” said Mayor Richard Riordan, who was present. “We’re as ready as any city in the world can be, but we can always be better.”