|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
U.S. Response: Ridge Pleased With TOPOFF 2 Exercise U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday that he was pleased with the initial lessons learned from the “Top Officials 2” (TOPOFF 2) exercise — a simulation of terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction — held this week in Seattle and Chicago (see GSN, May 12). “If we are going to make our response system stronger, we first have to identify where strengths, as well as weaknesses, exist,” Ridge said during a visit to Chicago’s 911 center for emergency communications. A full report on the exercise, sections of which may be classified, is expected by autumn, according to the Associated Press. “It’s information no one wants on the street and available for the bad guys,” said Homeland Security official Don Jacks. U.S., state and local officials have said a few glitches were experienced during the exercise. For example, in Seattle, which suffered a “dirty bomb” explosion at the start of the exercise, Mayor Greg Nickels had trouble obtaining an interpretation of the projected radiation plume, AP reported. “There was no indication of what it meant to be inside the green or outside the green,” Nickels said. “It was just a big green blob,” he said. It took one hour to receive an explanation that 4,000 people lived or worked in the “exclusion zone,” where radiation levels were the highest, according to AP. Based on that information, Nickels ordered a large section of downtown Seattle residents to “shelter in place.” Nickels said that if the bomb had been real, he would not have wanted to take so long to issue the order (Elizabeth Gillespie, Associated Press, May 16). In its part of the exercise, Chicago this week has coped with a mock plague attack, according to Agence France-Presse. The city’s simulated troubles grew yesterday with a collapsed building and an airport disaster involving the collision of an emergency services helicopter with a passenger airliner. Ridge yesterday praised Chicago’s efforts during the exercise. “Our initial assessment is that the city has performed well,” he said (Agence France-Presse, May 16).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
