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."