My county will be running a bioterrorism/infectious disease outbreak training excersize later this month:

Dear Montgomery County Partner:

Greetings from the UTMB Montgomery County Health Department! We would like to invite you to partner with in serving our community by promoting public health emergency preparedness.

The UTMB Montgomery County Health Department and Conroe Independent School District will host a Bioterrorism Exercise on Tuesday, July 31 at The Woodlands 9th Grade Campus, 10010 Branch Crossing Drive. The drill will last from 10:00 a.m. to Noon, and will simulate the process of distributing antibiotics to Public Health Volunteers, who will later distribute antibiotics to members of the public.

Exercise participants will act as “Volunteers” and report to the site to collect mock medication for themselves and family members, to register, and to receive badges and job assignments. Our pre-trained workers will dispense the medication as quickly and efficiently as possible, simulating the response time that would be required in an actual event.

Participating in the exercise provides great benefits to you, to us and to our community. You will get a first-hand look at how your Health Department plans to serve you during a bioterrorism attack or infectious disease outbreak. We will be able to test our county’s public health preparedness and response plans and increase their relevance. The result will be a community better educated and more prepared to respond to attacks or diseases that threaten our wellbeing.

The success of the exercise is dependent upon the number of people who participate. The more people that come on July 31, the better equipped we’ll be to respond to a real life emergency. Please invite friends, neighbors and co-workers to take part. A few minutes of your time will make a big difference in our ability to plan for and respond to public health emergencies in our communities.

Thanks so much for your time and for all that you are doing for Montgomery County.

It should be interesting.

-Blast

Having done a few things along those lines, let me be the first to prepare you; it might work great, might be a disaster, and for sure will have some parts that will crack you up. Take your sense of humor along, and a lot of patience...

I always thought this would be a good way for terrorists to initiate a second attack, by distributing contaminated/laced medicine/food/water through a volunteer network. Even if the secondary attack were small, it would be significant enough to create a level of suspicion of all dispensed products.

For example, if a terrorist(s) had poisoned a small number of cases of donated bottled water during Katrina, using a few different brands of water and donating them at different locations, there would have been additional (beyond the effects of the hurricane itself) widespread panic. Once some of the donated bottled water was found to be contaminated, then all of the donated water would have become suspect.

Just look at the post 9/11 anthrax attacks and the effect on the Postal System and Emergency Services. I can’t tell you how many additional HazMat calls for suspicious packages were dispatched in the weeks following the attacks.

While this may turn out to be the only way to distribute (though a secondary volunteer force) necessary medications/food/water during a bio-terrorist or other type of attack, we could end up with additional problems, if there is not some method to ensure the safety of the product.

Pete

My thinking was if they really wanted to test this plan they need some armed aggressors attacking the aid station demanding the medicine... I'm not sure they are set up for that sort of event even though it strikes me as quite likely.

-Blast

"I always thought this would be a good way for terrorists to initiate a second attack, by distributing contaminated/laced medicine/food/water through a volunteer network."

Do you think terrorists are likely to be that subtle?

It seems to me that people of the terrorist mentality are more fond of explosives and guns. You may be right, but nothing I've heard about terrorists has indicated that they even think of operating in low-key mode.

Speaking of the pseudo-anthrax incidents after 9-11, I always thought of them as instigated by good old American citizens who thought it would be a good joke. Were any of those people found? And if there were, did any serve jail sentences to readjust their sense of humor?

Sue

Nighthiker,

Thank's for the link, it looks interesting. I read through Module 3 and all it covers is dangers due to the incident, not dangers due to angry people/attackers.

Is the basic assumption in these drills that everyone will move through the line quietly and do as they are told? Seems a bit optimistic to me, though hopefully I'm wrong.

-Blast

I was not necessarily referring (though not excluding them) to an international terrorist, but as with the anthrax attacks, possibly a domestic terrorist.



I too, suspect this was a domestic case of terrorism. However, it was not a joke, more likely an attempt by some (sick/deranged) individual to illustrate the vulnerability of America in dealing with a bio-terrorist attack. Very possibly, an individual who had been decrying our lack of preparation and wanted to drive the point home.



No one has ever been formally charged for these attacks.

Pete

Terrorists adapt. Subtle can be a lot more effective then flamboyant, and they can feed off each other. It also isn't new.

Car bomb goes off or a fire starts. 20, 30 minutes later, there is a second device that catches the responders. Really sneaky buggers would put out a couple of decoys to further delay any second line of responders. (Been done, many times.)

Shelters are public knowledge. Toss a couple of unguided rockets into a town, everyone takes shelter. The truck that has been turned into a two ton claymore is parked outside the largest shelter, and goes off by remote two or three minutes after the all clear sounds.

Have a few guys shoot at on side of a perimeter. While everyone is looking, you send a sapper or snatch team in on one of the other sides, or you've already put infiltrators in, who execute the real mission. (Been done, many times. Like at the original Jericho.)

Subtle could be done. And enough people are on edge enough that it could do more damage than the initial flashy attack.

It should be good for a lark, at least.

And we might be happily surprised.

Interesting additional information.

This is a simular exercise that was ran here in Norman Oklahoma about six or seven months ago. Our city is the 3rd largest in the state with a population of about 120,000, not including the students that come and go at the University of Oklahoma.

They held the exercise at the county fairgrounds, which is less than 1/4 to 1/2 of a mile from the Norman Regional Hospital.

I figured that I would check it out (get a free flu shot) by getting there about 30 minutes early. When I arrived, I observed a backlog of approximately 200 vehicles that had created a roadblock at both of the entrances. This extra traffic was causing problems for everyone else trying to get to work. (8:30 AM)

I kept on driving in order to avoid getting stuck in the logjam as I had my children with me. I was thankfull to get home thinking "Man what if that had been real and not just a flu shot exercise"....

This reminded me of something I already knew.

YOU CAN NOT DEPEND ON ANY ASSISTANCE FROM ANY GOVERMENT ENTITY.

Attempting to do so may very well cost you everything. Your life and those of your family.

I can imagine the insanity IF that had been a situation where they were giving vaccines for a bio warfare, bird flu, or smallpox. There would be many, many dead. All fighting over the small amount of assistance available.

It is the very best to network with friends and family, and prepare now for what might be coming in the near or distant future.

DO NOT GO TO AID AREAS. DO NOT GIVE UP CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE, AND THE LIVES OF YOUR CHILDREN TO THE CROWD MENTALLITY.

Just my thoughts.

Susan;

About two years ago, I was responsible for arranging a series of speakers on various aspects of security at the University of Calgary. The first speaker for the series was scheduled to be a former Israeli special ops type (now living in Toronto), giving a talk on suicide bombers and the Israeli response.

EXACTLY 30 minutes before the talk was scheduled to start, the fire alarm went off. At the time, I didn't consider this "terrorism" so much as I figured it was a nuisance prank by some lone individual who didn't like Israelis. I grabbed my laptop and the USB drive containing the powerpoint presentation and we exited the building along with everyone else.

Long story short: the building was shut down by the police HAZMAT team for over 7 hours. Several employees had to go through the emergency decontamination showers. The alarm was caused by the discovery of several envelopes containing an unidentified white powder.

A few hours later, Campus Security issued a university-wide advisory warning people to be on the lookout for any envelopes that either did not have a return address, or that had a return address from North York, Ontario. When I mentioned North York to my Israeli guest, he simply nodded and said "I know who sent it" or something like that.

A few months later, our guest speaker, as it happened, was a civilian scientist from the Defense Research Establishment at Suffield, where they specialize in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare defense. By coincidence, it turned out that the "white powder" had been sent to him for analysis. He wouldn't tell me what it was, of course, except to say that (a) it was not anthrax or any other life-threatening agent, and (b) it was not powdered sugar.

I have no proof of this, but there is now no doubt in my mind that this was a real terrorist attack; that it was organized and ordered by someone in another part of the country (Toronto and Calgary are two hours apart; think New York and Montana); and that it was carried out in person by someone on campus, probably a student.

I do believe that some terrorist organizations, at least, are quite capable of using poisoned envelopes instead of car bombs and IEDs to achieve their aims.

Interestingly, in an episode of American Justice (I think) one detective who was interviewed pointed out that poison and bombs tend to go hand in hand. Often, someone who has tried and failed to commit a murder by poison will resort to using a bomb. His theory was that, in both cases, it's a "coward's weapon"; you don't have to be there when the victim dies, and so you don't have to witness the suffering; whereas with a knife or a gun, you actually have to have the stomach to do it in person.