By Don Hunter
Anchorage Daily News
Copyright 2007 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Big trouble ahead. Details to come.
Airplane crashes? Maybe. Train wrecks? Could be. Suspicious freighters approaching Alaska ports? Pipeline attacks? Heck, somebody might drop a homemade bomb on Talkeetna.
For a dozen days in May, thousands of civilians, cops, paramedics, FBI agents, firefighters, airmen, soldiers, National Guardsmen and other military units are going to be out and about across the state, reacting to threats. Not real threats, but as realistic as pretend terrorist assaults on the Last Frontier and its most important assets can be made to seem.
It’s all part of a national exercise called Ardent Sentry; the Alaska elements are Northern Edge -- normally an annual war games exercise for the military -- and Alaska Shield, a predominantly state and local effort.
Because terrorists don’t send out press releases announcing their upcoming events, the exact nature of the calamities to occur between May 7 and May 18 are being held close to the vest by the few agency and military officials who know all about them. Even Lt. Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the Alaskan Command and the senior military officer in Alaska, is in the dark about a lot of things.
“I purposely stayed away from knowing the details,” Fraser said in a recent interview. “So that I have to react to this just like I would have to for real. It’s important for all of us to do that.”
The Alaska games also will take place in the context of larger national exercises, Fraser said.
Some of the threats may be airborne, and inbound. Alaska forces may be called on to help respond to an attack in the Lower 48. If Alaska calls for help, the cavalry may not be able to ride to the rescue because it’s already preoccupied in San Francisco or Indianapolis.
Local Communities
Many if not most of the scenarios ahead will hit first and hardest at local communities. City police and firefighters will be the first on the scene, as they almost always are. If the mayor of Juneau or Fairbanks finds explosions taking out buildings downtown, let’s say, and realizes his town’s capabilities are overmatched, Gov. Sarah Palin’s people will get a call. It’ll be Palin’s job to direct Alaska State Troopers or other agencies to help, and to decide if it’s time to call Washington, D.C.
Every task won’t be deciding how to respond to a collapsing building. A large part of these exercises will be figuring out how to stop someone from blowing the thing up, according to John Madden, director of Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.
“We decided early on ... that this exercise is focused on sharing information, deterring a threat, and apprehending (plotters),” Madden said in his office in the Alaska National Guard Armory on Fort Richardson.
And unlike the last -- and first -- Alaska Shield in 2005, this one is trained on human-caused threats.
“In 2005, we had a dozen different types of things going on, up to and including an earthquake and a volcano, and a dam broke,” he said. “It was almost comical how many things we got into there. It did test the system, but it tested it in an artificial way.”
This time around, Madden and Fraser said, the dozens of agencies responsible for protecting the state and nation will practice getting intelligence information, analyzing it and sharing it with each other.
“How does a police officer in North Pole discover something, recognize it is of value, know how to report it through the system so it benefits the Coast Guard operating on the high seas?” Madden asked. “And that process works the other direction as well. How does somebody boarding a ship on the high seas discover something, realize it is of value and get it into the process that influences the activity of a state trooper in Fairbanks or in Anchorage?”
Mass Casualties
There will be mass casualty events, though. If local hospitals are overwhelmed with more injured people than beds available -- or if explosions and fires cause injuries a hospital in Fairbanks can’t effectively treat -- a “defense medical assistance team” of military and civilian volunteers will be ready to evacuate patients, Navy Capt. Linda Lenahan said.
The team -- usually around 35 members -- is looking forward to the test, Lenahan said. They’ve run tabletop scenarios on how to move patients fast and keep track of where they go, but this time, they actually will be flying them out.
Real people. Real C-130s. Real flights to Seattle hospitals. And really keeping track of where each patient goes.
“This time we’re going to (say), ‘Let’s really do it. Let’s make sure we can do it. We can go from Alaska. We can get down there to the Seattle area. You guys can receive our patients. And then if and when our hospital up there in Fairbanks calls and says, ‘Hey, where’s so and so?’ they’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, he’s over here.’
“That’s what we’re really excited about -- seeing how that’s going to work,” Lenahan said. “I’m sure it’s going to work ... but if there’s any little type of (glitch), then we’ll know how we have to plug it.”