ASIS International New York City Chapter

TOPOFF 3: Top Officials Emergency
Response Drill
"A Victim's Lesson Learned"

TOPOFF 3, the largest and most comprehensive counterterrorism exercise ever held, took place in April 2005. The Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness (SLGCP) sponsored the exercise. The Department of Homeland Security is now analyzing the findings.

Twenty-seven federal agencies, state and local governments, and nongovernmental agencies joined the private sector and other countries in the exercise, which aimed to improve incident response procedures and implement new measures of preparedness for the future.

As a volunteer, I participated in the $16 million-dollar exercise, which took two years of planning and included more than 10,000 participants. The one-week exercise enacted a simultaneous series of terrorist incidents:

I traveled to the military base in New London, Conn., to receive my orders for serving as a “victim” for the exercise. The objectives for the exercise included:

Test the U.S. ability to respond to and manage twin WMD attacks.
Test the information sharing processes across all government agencies in the US to include the Private Sectors, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Test the public communication net work with coordinated public affairs messaging across all levels of the government.
Study “lessons learned.” This is an ongoing process. Many agencies and organizations are using the information they gathered at the exercise to plan their strategies.

The temperature had dropped into the low 40’s, which eliminated conducting the “wet” decontamination procedures. As we victims awaited processing, the general at the base urged us to be realistic in our acting. We were soon bused to the Moylan Tent, where professional makeup artists stood ready to apply our very realistic “injuries.”

Reality settled in. Standing in line with our military troops, who volunteered at the urging of commanding officers, we commented on what we might expect. I observed the horrific stage makeup being applied to show the effects of an explosion and chemical agent release from the simulated terrorist attack to come. Victims sported lost limbs, skin irritations and bloody wounds. Many of the other volunteers could not stand the sight of my own neck injury. Photographers and cameramen from DHS snapped photos and filmed images, which they transmitted to the central command center in Washington. The exercise was broadcast via live feed to the top officials of our government.

The explosion happened 100 feet from the actors’ holding area. A simulated vehicle bomb rocked New London. Once the site was safe to enter, hundreds of volunteers ran into their predesignated positions to begin the drill.

My position was only 25 feet from the burning vehicle. As I lay on the cold ground, time suddenly turned into a surreal experience. With my injury, I could not move alone. The minutes seemed like hours. I could see the VIP tent on the hill with the video cameras filming as the officials observed. The blast site was now marked with victims who lay injured in what was portrayed as a hometown country fair. A young man came to my aid and began yelling for help. A first responder, a local fireman, helped me to the triage area, set up a safe distance from the blast.

At this point, I began to realize my mistake. I had been acting like a victim, expecting someone else to take care of me. But it was my responsibility to take charge of my own—and others’ —first aid if I wanted to survive.

As we waited in an area with more than 100 injured people, panic ensued. People were screaming for help. Firefighters stood guard with fire hoses pointed at us, holding us in a makeshift quarantine area. During this time, no one took charge among the victims. It was chaotic. We were acting, but not thinking. Had someone taken the initiative to merely organize the wounded, it would have made it much easier for the emergency response personnel. I, too, was guilty of not acting. Hazmat arrived an hour later to inspect the injured. The initial assessment detected sulfur mustard, a manufactured chemical that exists in many forms. Exposure is usually not fatal, but symptoms may not occur for anywhere from two to 24 hours. Mustard can last from one to two days in average weather conditions— and from weeks to months in very cold conditions. Extensive exposure causes blistered skin, long-term respiratory or digestive problems, and potential blindness.

My condition was listed as “critical,” and I was on the first stretcher through “dry decontamination.” Then, I was loaded onto a bus destined for the hospital. I welcomed the ride in the ambulance; it gave me time to reflect. Forty-five minutes later, I went through another decontamination tent set up in the hospital parking lot. My medical treatment records consisted of a paper tag put on my wrist. The hospital staff took all measures necessary to keep us quarantined and apart from real patients.

The manual process of tagging and identifying victims will surely be one of the first tasks automated. The margin of error was simply far too great. The Hazmat personnel could not handle the tags with their large and bulky gloves. I imagined that a bar code scanner and wristband would provide a better means of uploading and tracking vital information on victims. For victims who cannot speak and have no identification, the barcode system would still provide a way to record vital identification information that could help pinpoint a victim’s location during processing. The issue of the Hazmat responders’ gloves remains a challenge.

The exercise tested the communication process between agencies. Once engaged, incident response procedures demonstrated the high level of operational experience and training these professionals had received. This exercise demanded their collaboration in real time. A team of onsite DHS analysts documented the exercise, using mini laptop computers on neck straps. This data was transmitted wirelessly to the TOPOFF 3 command center, providing officials with live updates.

Fully recovered, I was transported back to the blast site and greeted by the Red Cross, who did an amazing job of feeding the thousands of volunteers who had spent the day in the damp cold.

I should have and could have done more. I am CPR certified, but I lack full first-aid training. TOPOFF 3 helped me appreciate victims’ plights and made me aware of my responsibility to prepare and to act... if I have the chance.

Steve Iannucci, TOPOFF 3 Contributor, Vice President Global Crisis Management, Citigroup:

Citigroup was excited about participating in TOPOFF 3 because it gave the company a chance to exercise their unique crisis management model.

The company’s model allows the business sectors and business units to manage crisis events locally, while the corporate crisis management team provides cross-sector and enterprise-wide support. In the meantime, business units have the authority to make decisions that will affect business continuity.

The exercise also provided Citigroup with an opportunity to work with the federal and state government as a private-sector participant in the recently released National Response Plan. The exercise allowed Citigroup’s crisis management managers to integrate into the National Response Plan and to learn its expectations and limitations.

Almost one year after TOPOFF 3 and coming up on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, NYC InfraGard will be turning the spotlight on geographic information systems (GIS). InfraGard is a cooperative effort between the U.S. government, led by the FBI, and an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local government and law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to security U.S. critical infrastructure.

On March 29, 2006, at the home of the NYC Panoramic at the Queens Museum of the Arts, NYC InfraGard will host a GIS Security Summit and Workshop. The community is invited to attend and learn how technology has evolved. Those interested will need to RSVP at www.nym-infragard.us to allow proper planning for event security.

Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing involve many of the critical infrastructure protection (CIP) sectors, which fall within the InfraGard mission to protect. Mapping, databases, GPS, satellite and aerial photography, and photogrammetry are just some of the technologies that fall under GIS and Remote Sensing. In critical infrastructure protection, these technologies are widely used in emergency response and emergency management.

The introduction of a GIS segment to NYC Metro InfraGard Alliance will expand the technical knowledge base of the NYC InfraGard membership, benefiting the community it serves by educating participants on accessing both these tools and the professionals trained to use them.

After September 11, 2001, the GIS and IT communities rushed to support first responders and the multiple agencies tasked with response, rescue and recovery in the area surrounding the World Trade Center—and in New York City as a whole. Since then, the use of GIS and remote-sensing data has taken on a more important role in how the government and the private sector protect the nation’s infrastructure and respond to disasters worldwide.

The joining of NYC InfraGard with the GIS and remote-sensing communities can provide a secure networking environment where government and the private sector can share information and get a hands-on perspective on how GIS and remotesensing technologies can help save lives, protect the nation and make the future more secure.