Caledonia Record, Vermont
Operation Glow:
First Responders Tested
In Drill Explosions, Crashes And Radiation Alarms
BY ROBIN SMITH Staff
Writer (Excerpt)
Monday April 11, 2005
NEWPORT CITY
VERMONT
On a fictional Friday, the nation's first responders go on alert:
Terrorist warnings have gone out.
The next day, a sunny Saturday morning
in rural northeastern Vermont, two U.S. Border Patrol agents head into the woods
near Norton to track two people who are trying to slip across the border into
the U.S. Suddenly, there's an explosion. A southbound freight train derails at
the border in Norton, and a small fire erupts in one car. There is probably some
kind of hazardous material on the train.
Emergency, fire and law
enforcement officials converge from both sides of the border.
Meanwhile,
those two suspicious people are back, this time in a car on Interstate 91 in
Derby Line. They set off a radiation alarm at the border, but dodge inspectors,
fleeing south with state police and Border Patrol agents in pursuit. The two
careen off I-91 at Exit 27, crashing over a guardrail on the access road above
Newport City - right next to the Clyde River dams and the headwaters of Lake
Memphremagog.
Was the train wreck a decoy? What kind of radiation was
detected? What will our plucky first responders do?
About 75 of them
faced these scenarios in a tabletop exercise Saturday April 9 at the Gateway
Center in Newport City.
Saturday's drill on paper is preparation for a
real-time enactment, called Operation Glow, on May 14.
The terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, prompted federal officials to beef up equipment and
training for border first responders.
"It has brought us closer together,
I believe, especially with our neighbors in Canada," said Newport City Police
Chief J. Paul Duquette.
The first responders spent a lot of time Saturday
morning asking questions about the Operation Glow scenarios crafted by Lt. Tom
Hanlon of the Vermont State Police in Derby.
They also learned about how
their peers, especially in the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the railway
industry, are prepared to react in emergencies.
A mock leak of sodium
hydroxide, called caustic soda, from the train was considered a minor disaster
by rail officials - as long as it didn't get into the local water or catch fire,
spreading hazardous materials across the border area.
Communications can
be a sometime thing in rural Vermont, and managing that problem will be one of
the most critical issues for first responders to deal with in Norton, they said.
A new mobile communications unit paid for with Homeland Security money will
help.
The evolving radiation disaster on paper involves North Country
Hospital in Newport and would eventually contaminate several first responders,
an ambulance driver and the two suspects.
The radiation drill sounds grim
at first, but in the end everyone except for those contaminated are lucky,
according to the Operation Glow play book.
The radiation is from 12
cobalt pellets, likely taken from a medical facility in Montreal. It was
probably headed for Boston, and would have been the main ingredient in a
so-called "dirty bomb."
Explosion of a dirty bomb could shut down whole
sections of a major East Coast city for decades.
U.S. Border Patrol
agents at the tabletop exercise said they are always "thinking worst-case
scenario."
Knowing how to react is critical, first responders said. So is
having the right equipment and enough trained people.
Reaching out to
citizens and the media will also be essential, to help with evacuations, avoid
panic, explain what happened, and alert secondary assistance from the Community
Emergency Response Teams.
Aside from the major drill May 14, the citizens
teams in Essex and Orleans counties will receive free training this
month.
How important local responses will be in major emergencies was
driven home by one rail official, who drew lots of laughs Saturday when he
quipped: "I'll be up there in four hours."
"We will count on the
resourcefulness of people on the scene," Duquette said.
