Topoff 4 Exercise underway

The wide-ranging Topoff 4 Exercise is underway, simulating terrorist attacks on urban centers and critical infrastructure. A dirty bomb “exploded” over Tempe, Arizona, Tuesday, remotely detonated by federal authorities working a command center inside Chandler’s historic Crowne Plaza San Marcos Hotel.

The explosion did not really happen, except as one of several scenarios created by federal officials hunkered down in the Chandler hotel, headquarters this week for federal, state and local authorities participating in the nation’s largest terrorism drill. TOPOFF 4 involves thousands of participants in Arizona, Oregon, and Guam practicing responses to various emergencies. At the center of the excercise is the hotel ballroom, lined with flat-panel TVs, players at command center type tables with laptop computers and phones. Their job: Create fake scenarios that other agencies then must react to in order to test their level of preparation. “Phoenix has not really dealt with anything catastrophic and it helps prepare the community for such events like the Super Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl,” said Michael Widomski, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DHS is the coordinating agency for the exercise, which involves 22,000 participants in Guam, Oregon, and Arizona from all levels of government, nationally and internationally, as well as the private sector in a full-scale simulated response to radiological dispersal device, or dirty bomb. So far in Day 1 of the drill a variety of scenarios were played out: a Cesium-137 dirty bomb explodes at a power plant in Guam, testing the response of the U.S. territory. The large-scale attack then continued, moving to Portland Tuesday at 9:06 a.m., where another bomb explodes on a bridge. Then reports of another explosion outside the Pima County Adult Detention Center, but authorities learned it was a crew that hit a gas line. Next, a twelve-vehicle collision slows traffic between Phoenix and Tucson. Then at 10:30 a.m. a person is stopped at Sky Harbor airport with a suspicious backpack.

Finally, at 11 a.m., a dirty bomb explodes at Loops 101 and 202 in Tempe. Winds carry the contamination southeast over Tempe and Chandler - and authorities must react. Inside the hotel ballroom in Chandler, crawling with about 150 federal and local officials, large flat-panel TVs broadcast a fake news network reporting the “news” as it unfolded — with the help of retired TV anchor Forrest Sawyer.

Throughout the week officials will test how they will handle large-scale evacuations and deal with variables that may have been problematic in past disasters, Widomski said.