October 10, 2007

Valley to host largest-ever terrorism drill

Sean Holstege
The Arizona Republic

The Phoenix area will be a focus next week of the largest terrorism drill ever conducted, testing not only Arizona's disaster readiness, communications network and leaders but evolving plans to secure the Super Bowl next year.

The drill, fourth in a series, takes on added significance because it is the first since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 exposed deep flaws in the government's response to catastrophes and its handling of mass evacuations. It also comes four months before Glendale hosts the Super Bowl, an event that ranks among presidential inaugurations and major political conventions for security precautions.

The biennial exercise "will help us evaluate whether our planning efforts are good enough, now, for the future and for the Super Bowl," Arizona Homeland Security Director Leesa Berens Morrison said.

Called TOPOFF because it involves top government officials, the drill is designed to test for holes in state and national emergency plans. It also aims to determine whether key decision makers follow those plans and can make timely, well-informed judgments about when to evacuate or call in outside help.

Lessons from previous drills and incidents have led to a greater emphasis on long-term recovery from an attack and greater involvement of private companies in the drill, said James Kish, director of the National Integration Center, which oversees TOPOFF planning.

Typically, terrorism drills reveal that agencies cannot properly communicate with one another. Radios are on different channels and cellphones get overloaded, meaning information does not flow smoothly and key officials often don't know what's happening soon enough, who can respond or what they can do.

Gov. Janet Napolitano has made unified communications a top priority in the state security plan.

Still, synchronizing communications has remained difficult nationwide because of technical challenges and a Washington bureaucracy slow to standardize equipment.
Super Bowl security

Planning for Super Bowl security began about a year ago and is still not complete. The cost will run into the millions, but no firm estimate exists yet.

The final plan to secure the University of Phoenix Stadium for the Feb. 3 Super Bowl will build on measures from previous championship games. Digital license-plate readers will be deployed for the Glendale game, said Sgt. Tim Mason, who has been involved in planning for the state Department of Public Safety.

Universal radios will be issued to everybody working that day. If necessary, one direction of Interstate 10 will be shut down so all lanes can be used as an evacuation route.

As in previous games, the Federal Aviation Administration set up 10-mile no-fly zones around the venues, with fighter jets patrolling the skies. Thousands of extra uniformed and plainclothes police will be on duty, along with bomb-sniffing dogs.

The Transportation Security Administration will position heavily armed teams in high-traffic areas to act as a deterrent to crime.

The government also will deploy digital cameras that can pan a crowd or zoom in on a face or object in the stands. And mobile bomb labs, X-ray sensors and night-vision infrared devices will be used.

TOPOFF is designed to test the security measures.

"These are the only opportunities to see if our plans have any holes in them. It's better that it occurs before the Super Bowl," said Cam Hunter, who runs the emergency preparedness office at the Arizona Department of Health Services.
'Dirty bomb' scenario

TOPOFF, which runs from Monday to Oct. 19, will cost Arizona $600,000 and will involve 26 state agencies, 15 cities, 11 counties, three tribes and 37 private companies.

Arizona, Oregon, Guam and Washington, D.C., will participate in the exercise that will involve 15,000 officials and coordinate with drills in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The drill will take place only in conference rooms, on plasma screens, over telephones and radios and in the imaginations of the thousands of participants. Officials will be reacting to three simultaneous, simulated "dirty bomb" explosions. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to spew radioactive waste over a large area.

A dirty-bomb attack is one of 15 scenarios studied in the National Response Plan, the government's blueprint for handling national catastrophes. According to the scenario, if a device exploded in a city, 180 people would die and 36 square blocks would be contaminated. Fallout would drift on the winds for up to 2 miles, and people would have to be evacuated or shelter in place.

If the Phoenix scenario played out, it would be worse. The "explosion," planned for the intersection of Loops 101 and 202, could destroy key evacuation routes, and the fallout could poison the Salt River.
Learning from Katrina

One question Arizona emergency planners want to answer is how to evacuate large populations who have no means of transportation, particularly if they fear authorities or don't speak English.

After Katrina, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security mandated that large cities, including Phoenix, have a mass-evacuation strategy.

Morrison and Napolitano said they want to use the drill to promote and test the state's 211 system and corresponding Web site (www.az211.gov), both of which are designed to get disaster information to the public.

The Maricopa County Emergency Operations Center has a database of those within 10 miles of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station who might need help evacuating, but that list has not been expanded.

The Arizona Department of Transportation expects to finish a statewide evacuation plan next year. TOPOFF could lead to adjustments.

Katrina showed the government that it needed a strategy for a long-term recovery. For the first time, officials will follow up the drill with exercises aimed at gauging recovery, and they will enlist private industry that would have a stake in getting the city running.

"The significance of this exercise is the physical doing of it," Napolitano said. "It will give us feedback about our chains of communication, allow us to test our equipment and let us make sure everything works the way it ought to."