July 19, 2004
By Cahal Milmo
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Emergency planners admitted last night that procedures for dealing with a chemical attack on Britain need to be improved after "victims" in the biggest anti-terror exercise yet waited nearly three hours for treatment.
About 2,000 people, including more than 500 police, fire and ambulance staff, descended on the outskirts of Birmingham yesterday to take part in Exercise Horizon - a mock poison gas attack on the National Exhibition Centre (NEC).
The operation, viewed by international media including the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera, was the latest and largest in a series of tests to ensure emergency services can cope with a terrorist attack.
Police had sealed off the building within 15 minutes of the start of the exercise, designed to test the response of emergency crews from six counties across the West Midlands.
But senior officers were forced to accept that other measures appeared to have failed when decontamination units needed to begin treatment of 400 "casualties", consisting of Army and Red Cross volunteers, were not available until two hours and 45 minutes after the first alert.
Chief Inspector Surjeet Manku, of West Midlands Police, said: "We need to look at why it took so long, whether decisions were rationally made and whether there were any communication difficulties."
Co-ordinators of the exercise, which ran from 9.30am to 4pm, said staff had been trying to strike a balance between ensuring aid reached victims and the need to ensure rescuers were themselves protected.
They pointed to the precedent of the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo metro in 1995 when rescue workers who rushed to the scene also fell victim to the poison. More than 130 ambulance staff needed treatment and 30 were hospitalised.
Detective Chief Constable Chris Sims, who was overseeing yesterday's exercise, said: "We have got to minimise the time it takes to get this full canopy of resources deployed, and I am sure we will be talking about that ... There is a real balance to be struck. It is not just protecting ourselves. It's about serving casualties."
In line with previous large-scale exercises such as that at Bank Underground station in London last year, emergency workers called to the scene had little or no prior warning.
Volunteer victims, who were made to sit or stand in containment zones wearing orange capes, were instructed to become angry and confused at delays in their treatment.
At one stage, several tried to escape by running out of the cordon, forcing police in protective suits and gas masks to apprehend them. A field hospital set up in the grounds of the NEC was used to treat critically ill casualties but it was not until 2pm, nearly five hours after the "attack", that the last of the victims had passed through the green and yellow inflatable decontamination units.
The exercise, which had been planned since January, took place less than a week after the Government announced a £500m increase in funding for anti-terrorism measures.
Managers said the exercise had highlighted the potential need for a specialist rapid response team in the West Midlands similar to one being set up in London. Paul Causer, co-ordinator for the West Midlands Fire Service, said: "It would be a team of fire, police, ambulance and other agencies that would respond very rapidly to this type of incident. They would have the capability and skills to make quick decisions about this type of event. After today, I think they will looking very favourably at the idea."
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