New Jersey: Terrorist attack is scenario for drill involving emergency responders in three counties

 

A prop plane was ground zero for a drill on response to a terrorist attack just outside Atco Raceway in Waterford Township Sunday, April 29, 2012. Emergency responders from three counties participated in the drill.

Photo by Joe Green/Gloucester County Times

WATERFORD TWP. — Spectators spring from their seats and cheer as the engines roar, side-by-side toward the finish line.

It’s another sun-drenched weekend at Atco Raceway, and the race comes down to a bumper’s edge. But suddenly, a deafening roar overwhelms all other noise.

A passenger plane snaps trees then slams to the turf, seeming to shake the earth.

Soon, police, firefighters, EMS and later federal agents will descend on this edge of Wharton State Forest, picking through the rubble and the pines for battered survivors, and for clues.

Such was the scenario for a practice drill held here Sunday, involving 24 emergency agencies from Camden, Burlington and Atlantic counties.

The drill - funded by at least part of a $102,000 Homeland Security grant - was a run-through for the emergency workers who would respond to a terrorist attack on a plane whose carnage ends up here. 

Organizers stressed the importance of a well-coordinated effort crossing jurisdictions and including agencies from the local to the federal level.

“With a large plan crash, you could have miles and miles of debris,” Camden County Emergency Management Coordinator Samuel Spino said.

“That’s why you need a coordinated effort.”

That would include teams securing the plane’s main body, searching it for survivors, removing the dead. It would mean sending teams out to nearby fields and into the forest to look for others, and for pieces of debris to be combed over by investigators.

Members of community emergency response teams (CERTs) - volunteer groups that provide certain services generally when professional responders are not yet available or to help them - took part in the drill along with police, firefighters, EMS and others.

Spino said the drill was a long time coming. It took about two years of planning, he said. 

Part of the difficulty lay in getting 24 groups - with schedules and commitments of their own - together for a large-scale training drill, Spino said.

“But in a real-life situation like this, they’re all coming,” he added.

A prop passenger plane placed near the Raceway gates served as ground zero. The craft lay, snapped open just behind the cockpit.

The tail was missing, and an engine lay to the side, along with a wheel and landing gear nearby.

The drill’s scene altogether was bound by the Mullica River and Jackson Road, Spino said, and was broken into three general divisions. 

Practice like Sunday’s is especially important in an area surrounded by airports, including Philadelphia and Atlantic City International, as well as Cross Keys Airport, said Camden County Director of Communications and Community Affairs Dan Keashen.

“This area sits between several large airports,” Keashen said. “God forbid one of those planes is highjacked by terrorists.”

But in such an event, he and Spino say, responders from throughout the area will be ready.

Source:  http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county