Terror drill succeeds by baring failure
Thousands are ‘killed’ in staged biological attack as state response systems buckle
Thursday, April 07, 2005
BY RICK HEPP
Star-Ledger Staff
The problems kept cropping up for New Jersey officials on the third day of the nation’s largest terrorism response drill.
There’s no way to effectively seal off the state’s borders to contain the spread of a deadly disease. The state has no facility to safely conduct autopsies on victims of a highly dangerous airborne disease. The state epidemiologist wasn’t getting all the information he needed from the field.
In other words, the drill was succeeding.
“The purpose of the exercise here is to actually push and stress the system to the point of failure and beyond,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a news conference at Rutgers University in Piscataway. “We’re going to do a thorough review when we’re done at the end of the week. There is no doubt we’re going to learn something.”
Chertoff and acting Gov. Richard Codey toured a mock antibiotic distribution center that was mobilized yesterday at the Rutgers Louis Brown Athletic Center as part of the five-day, $16 million drill known as TopOff 3.
The full-scale exercise began Monday morning with patients complaining of flu-like symptoms reporting to two hospitals in Middlesex and Union counties. Within an hour, authorities found an abandoned sports utility vehicle that they later determined had been used to spray pneumonic plague around the state.
The storyline brought more bad news to emergency officials around the state yesterday: If the attack had been real, more than 6,500 people would have died and thousands more been sickened. There was also good news: the capture of the terrorists.
The exercise is a mixture of imaginary scenarios and real-world activities that have involved almost 8,000 people in New Jersey. Those participating in the drill are supposed to react as though the events are real.
And so, Codey raised the threat level to “red,” the highest level, to theoretically close New Jersey’s borders and restrict travel within the state to essential personnel. Police never actually closed down any bridges or tunnels, but those in the drill had to react as if they had.
Realistic raids were staged at two Jamesburg locations about 7 a.m. yesterday, where five suspected “terrorists” were arrested. About 200 agents, officers and rescue workers from federal, state and local agencies took part in the raids; three of the “suspects” played sick from the plague and had to be “treated,” said Joseph Billy Jr., special agent in charge of the Newark FBI office.
More than 50 hospitals in 13 counties were participating in the drill yesterday by caring for volunteers acting as seriously ill patients. By tomorrow morning, health departments in every county will set up distribution points to dispense mock antibiotics to volunteers acting as worried residents.
“The goal of the exercise is to expose the flaws in our well-laid plans,” Attorney General Peter Harvey said. “It has.”
Among those flaws was the fact that state medical examiners in an actual bioterrorism attack would have to travel to New York to safely conduct autopsies on victims of a disease like pneumonic plague, Harvey said. That’s because New Jersey is not equipped with an autopsy room that can contain any airborne toxins released during the procedure.
“It has raised serious issues with respect to the health of doctors and medical personnel who are performing the autopsies,” Harvey said. “It has also raised issues about the health of the public.”
Authorities also plan to review the state’s evacuation plans as a result of their participation in TopOff 3. The drill did not require New Jersey to be evacuated but, “it got people thinking, 'What if this were a different kind of scenario? How would you do it?” Harvey said.
“I think the plans have to be reviewed and revised,” he said. “It’s one of those things that cannot be tested, but we have to develop a sensible plan.”
State epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz said he was never briefed about what federal law enforcement authorities were discovering during the early stages of the drill.
“I didn’t get anything,” Bresnitz said. “As the epidemiologist in charge, I think we need some law enforcement briefing from the people who are in charge of the investigation, which is the federal agents.”
Billy said the FBI is, for the first time, giving intelligence briefings to non-law enforcement departments, and that health department officials should have received information on the investigation as it unfolded because they were represented at the briefings at the Joint Operations Center in Newark.
“The FBI may have thought that our representative there knew everything and passed it on,” Bresnitz said. “It’s fair to say perhaps that our representative did have the information and didn’t pass it on. The biggest hurdle in this exercise is communication, and I think this is a good example of it.”