Unlike any fire drill, Blaine County held its first weapons-of-mass-destruction exercise Saturday at Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey. The eerie familiarity of the scenario involved some 30 vehicles and dozens of state and local first responders who tackled a mock terrorism attack on an incoming Horizon Air Dash 8 Q400 airliner. In reality, the event would have resulted in many casualties.
The exercise, which involved hazardous-materials teams dressed in fully encapsulated Tyvek suits armed with biological, chemical and radiological contaminant detection equipment, kicked into gear at about 9 a.m. According to a script, a passenger on the commercial flight that originated in Seattle called 911 to report an unruly passenger on the plane had thrown a white powdery substance on some of the passengers.
Police and firefighters were en route to the airport when the fictitious plane crashed at the south end of the airport. The Tyvek suits did not come out until the final portion of the exercise, which made the workers look something like lunar-landers as the blue-, brown- and yellow-suited decontamination team entered the 300-foot quarantine area around the plane.
The brainchild of regional WMD first responders and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the exercise will ultimately cost some $20,000 in federal funds, said Terry Bingham, regional coordinator for the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security. However, he said, that was only a rough estimate. Each agency is expected to invoice the office to recover any equipment and personnel costs incurred.
For the exercise, an old bus parked south of the new parking lot at the airport was used to simulate the crashed plane and to provide a convenient place for spectators to view the exercise.
Bingham said one of the benefits of such an exercise is that people who would never get to meet outside of a real event have a chance to interact and understand each other's role during such an exercise, one of many which are being practiced regularly around the country.
Curious onlookers were essentially in the "hot zone", which turned out to be contaminated with ricin, a lethal toxin.
"Unlike anthrax, there is no known antidote or vaccine," said Hailey Fire Chief Mike Chapman, who was the incident commander managing the emergency response that involved 16 passengers (high school and middle school volunteers).
The lethal dose of ricin for an adult male is about 320 milligrams, a little more than one pulverized aspirin tablet.
In the exercise, most people outside the bus probably were not exposed to the substance, Chapman said.
"I had no clue what I was going to do," said Jack VanPaepeghem, a Wood River High School 10th-grader, who showed up to volunteer early Saturday morning. He and the other passengers were rescued from the plane, asked to strip to their shorts and doused by a fire hose for decontamination. Some patients suffered no major injuries in the mock accident, but had VanPaepeghem's exposure to ricin been substantial and real, for example, he could have died at any time within the last four days since his virtual exposure.
Of course, in the first hour, first responders also did not know that they, too, were being exposed to ricin. About two hours later when the Magic Valley Hazardous Materials Response Team and the 101st Civil Support team arrived with state-of-the-art communications and WMD detection and containment equipment, the investigation into the hazardous material began.
As part of the mock response, Hailey City Clerk Heather Dawson acted as the public information officer for the event and held an initial press conference in the airport parking lot about two hours after the emergency dispatch call. She said the plane crash resulted in a broken wing and a fuel spill but no fire. She added that all of the valley fire departments responded, as did airport and other government officials. The terminal was evacuated, she said, and automobile access to the area was being restricted.
Meanwhile, the 16 passengers were being evacuated from the simulated plane, given basic first aid, strapped on backboards when needed, and hosed off between two fire trucks as emergency workers practiced gross decontamination.
The official airport response an hour and a half into the event was that security personnel were "taking all precautions for decontamination issues," but no one knew what the white powder was.
Simultaneously, the Magic Valley Hazardous Materials Response Team and the 101st Civil Support team, also equipped with state-of-the-art communications equipment and WMD detection and containment equipment, were en route to confirm whether or not the white substance was toxic and then deal with the cleanup.
As part of the scenario, some of the passengers on the plane checked themselves into St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center. Others were transported by ambulance for treatment for injuries and because they were complaining of tingling sensations.
"I had insider information, but I did not pass that on to the staff," said Jo Dee Alverson, manager of infection control and safety officer at the hospital. "I had just done (hazardous materials) suit training and had a table-top (lesson) in January. As a result of the mock accident, we had victims, including some firefighters who were exposed. A lot of the patients came in complaining of (virtual) broken arms, head injuries and tingling on their arms. Some actually were cold from being out at the airport for so long."
The hospital exercise took place over several hours as patients trickled in from the airport, but Alverson said since it was a virtual experience everything was happening faster than it would have in a real incident.
Like the gross decontamination procedure at the airport, patients were showered in the hospital decontamination room before they were admitted to the emergency room and triaged according to their injuries and symptoms.
"We were going on the assumption that it was anthrax and they were given Cipro," Alverson said. Cipro is a prescription antibiotic effective against a broad range of bacteria, but not ricin. "If they really had ricin, we would treat them with atropine (adrenaline to keep their heart rate up) until they die."
The mock patients were released from the hospital before the effects of ricin would have taken hold in the real world. In fact, in a real incident, the airplane accident victims and some of the first responders may not have found out what they were exposed to until much later in the day when crews at the airport had completed their investigation of the plane. Some of them might have already perished, Alverson said.
