Nation to Test Its Response to Major Terrorist Attack

Next month, Cabinet secretaries, top state and local officials and emergency units from Denver and Portsmouth, N.H., will conduct the largest-ever field test of the nation’s ability to respond to an attack by terrorists using chemical or biological weapons.

Driven by recent violent attacks here and abroad, Congress ordered the test and appropriated $3.5 million last year to pay for it. The test will take place during a 10-day period in May, federal officials announced Thursday.

After the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City and East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings and a 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, U.S. officials have concluded it only a matter of when--not whether--a terrorist will use a weapon of mass destruction in the U.S.

Called “Topoff” because of the involvement of top officials, the exercise will have the active participation of Attorney General Janet Reno, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt.

Officials from governors’ and mayors’ offices, state and local emergency managers will join the FBI, local police and fire departments in responding to the fake chemical and a fake biological attack during the 10-day period.

“It is vitally important that our nation be prepared for the consequences of a terrorist event,” Witt said Thursday.

Reno said the test “can only help us to better educate and train responders across all levels of government.”

Denver and Portsmouth, N.H., were picked to represent a large metropolitan area and a smaller city, and because they have different levels of training. Denver has had federally funded preparedness training; Portsmouth has not.

While the two cities are known, the participating officials and responders who will make and execute decisions will not know in advance where or when the “terrorists” will strike during the 10-day period or what “weapons” they will use. No actual weapons or germs will be used.

The plan is to test the ability of existing agencies to identify and diagnose biological attacks, conduct mass immunization and mass emergency patient care and to identify chemical weapons and limit contamination while rescuing and treating large numbers of people. Managers will be required to decide what to tell the public and how to prevent panic.

Actors will play victims and even news media members.

In addition to the Denver and Portsmouth tests, a separate, previously scheduled domestic counterterrorism test, NCR-2000, will be conducted in Washington and adjacent Prince Georges County, Md., by the FBI, the Energy Department, FEMA and state and local emergency responders. They will respond to a fake attack with an undisclosed type of weapon.

To guard against false alarms among nonparticipants, all messages sent during the test will be proceeded and followed by a notice that it was part of an exercise. First responders will not use lights or sirens and will obey traffic laws as they travel to the scene, a Justice official said.