The Hindu : International : U.S. carries out anti-terrorism drill

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Wednesday, Apr 06, 2005

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International

U.S. carries out anti-terrorism drill

HILLSIDE (NEW JERSEY), APRIL 5. The biggest anti-terrorism drill ever held in the United States got under way on Monday with a mock biological attack in New Jersey and a simulated chemical-weapons explosion in Connecticut.

Named TOPOFF 3, the $16-million, week-long exercise is meant to find weak spots in the nation's emergency planning.

``I want to make it clear that we are going to push our plans and our systems to the very limit,'' the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said. ``So, we expect failure because we're actually going to be seeking to push to failure, and that is, in our judgment, the best way to get a `lessons learned' from what we do here.''

Although no real weapons or bio-agents are used, State and local officials responded as if it were the real thing, sending ambulances to hospitals and flooding the area with investigators and emergency workers in protective suits. ``It's a test of how well people are communicating with each other and whether the right people are getting pulled into this exercise,'' said Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for New Jersey's Office of Counterterrorism.

The biological attack drill started in New Jersey at the Hillside campus of Kean University with officers swarming around the scene of a mock auto wreck. A hose nozzle sticking out a rear window of one vehicle raised cautions; they found a commercial sprayer that presumably had been used to disperse a fake biological agent.

Officials also rolled in a bomb-squad robot with a mounted video camera to allow investigators to peer inside the suspicious vehicle from a safe distance.

— AP

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