Most states are ill-prepared for the casualties of terrorism, expert says
 
By Eric Rosenberg
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2007 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved

WASHINGTON — To the list of possible terrorist threats, add the idea of a nuclear bomb exploding in the middle of an American city.

That possibility was explored during a simulated attack in Honolulu where officials concluded that there would be thousands of casualties, a nuclear "hot zone" that would prevent would-be rescuers from helping the injured, and communications failures because of the blast's electro-magnetic pulse.

Alane Andreozzi, deputy chief of consequence management at the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, called the exercise "ground breaking" because "it was the first of its kind - an improvised nuclear device exercise with combined `boots on the ground' from local, state and federal responders."

The exercise concluded that the state would need to make improvements in preparedness if it were to manage such a devastating attack.

Cham Dallas, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Mass Destruction Defense, said that, like Hawaii, most localities are ill prepared for nuclear terrorism.

"It's amazing and shocking how little nuclear preparedness is going on around the country," said Dallas, who added that emergency services in U.S. cities would be rapidly overwhelmed by such an attack.

There has been such a proliferation of nuclear bomb-making technology around the world, Dallas said, "that I have come to the conclusion we are going to see one of these weapons used in a city within the next 10 years."

Army Maj. Gen. Vern Miyagi, who helped run the exercise last August, said the simulation showed that "there were a lot of areas we needed to work on."

"We didn't all go high-fives and say we've got it wired," said Miyagi, a Hawaii National Guardsman on assignment to the U.S. Pacific Command, which is based in Hawaii.

The exercise scenario assumed that a terrorist group had placed a half-kiloton nuclear bomb on a container ship and detonated it in Honolulu Harbor, in the city's downtown area, on a workday.

By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II produced a 12-kiloton explosion. The typical tactical nuclear weapon designed for use in artillery shells or small missiles has a yield of 10-20 kilotons.

Officials concluded that the bomb would likely result in about 200 immediate deaths from the blast, and 8,000 to 12,000 additional deaths from radiation contamination and trauma.

One of the key lessons was that emergency responders such as police and firefighters must be better trained not to rush headlong into the blast area to save people, despite their professional training to do just that.

"The issue is that you can't help people until we get a good assessment of ground zero, how far back the radiation goes and the extent of the contamination and disaster," said Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, the top National Guardsman in Hawaii.

"It's a tough call" not to go in and save people. But in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, the hot zone "is a write-off," Lee said.

Even when wearing radiation protective gear, responders would only be able to enter a highly radioactive area for minutes at a time without becoming contaminated by radiation.

The message to first responders was: "You've got to survive to help the bulk of the people," said Lee. "I've got to save the bigger population and mitigate and encapsulate this disaster to the smallest area."

Another lesson is that it could take hours to set up a perimeter outside the blast areas and away from the radioactive plume of debris.

A larger bomb would inflict wide damage.

In a U.S. Department of Homeland Security planning scenario sent to localities to help them plan for a nuclear attack, terrorists detonate a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb. Such a blast would destroy most buildings within 3,200 feet. Deaths would vary depending on the city, but would likely be into the tens of thousands.