U.K. Prepares Largest-Ever Terrorism Drill

More than 2,000 British emergency personnel plan to treat 400 “casualties” of a mock poison gas attack on Sunday in the United Kingdom’s largest-ever terrorism drill (see GSN, March 15).

“Exercise Horizon” is set to be held in central England. Ambulance, fire and police personnel will coordinate efforts to decontaminate the volunteer victims in disinfecting showers and transport some to nearby hospitals, according to Agence France-Presse.

“While Exercise Horizon is probably the largest civilian chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear exercise of its kind in the U.K. so far, what is being tested are not questions of scale but the coordination of resources and communication between the different organizations involved,” Helen Braithwaite, deputy director of the Regional Resilience Team, said in a prepared statement. “Training exercises are important as they ensure that we are prepared to respond to any kind of mass contamination incident, whether resulting from terrorist attack or an industrial accident,” she added.

Braithwaite said the exercise was not organized in response to any specific threat (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 16).

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