by Monica Chamness
Staff Writer
Training exercises to thwart nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism are taking place on local naval bases daily, Robert “Chip” Patterson, chief of the Emergency Preparedness Division of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department, told the Meninak Club Monday.
“Each scenario was as horrific, if not more so, than the things we saw Sept. 11,” said Patterson. “We had a planning threshold for 1,000 casualties.”
First responders are being taught how to handle explosive situations such as a nerve agent at a public gathering, a chemical attack on a landing airplane at JIA and the release into a movie theater of a plague having an incubation period and secondary transmission.
In the wake of the first bomb attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent Oklahoma City bombing, local city and military leaders gathered at NAS Jacksonville in 1997 to create the Metropolitan Medical Response System. But little concern had been placed on truly addressing terrorist threats until Sept. 11.
“The focus has been to reduce the effect that disaster has on the community and some of the specific steps that have to do with being able to detect it rapidly,” he said.
According to Patterson, the proposed budget from Congress will increase to $5.9 billion nationally to fight bioterrorism.
One strange upside, though, is that the medical community should have stronger safeguards against infection and disease as a result.
“That’s going to shore up public health in this country against outbreaks,” said Patterson, adding that Jacksonville is as likely a target as any other large city.
Patterson said keeping the public alert to possible attacks is one reason a color-coded alert system was enacted recently.
“They had an inability to communicate the level of detail from an intelligence report down through a national system for first responders and federal agencies to be on the appropriate posture,” explained Patterson of the system.
Locally, a strategic plan for security preparedness will surface in the coming months. Part of the strategy is to be able to continue operations and governmental functions from any location to avoid problems officials encountered in New York.
“The City of New York’s emergency operations center was in World Trade Center,” said Patterson. “When the first World Trade Center collapsed they abandoned the facility. They ended up having to create a command center at a wharf nearby, which is horrendous logistics.”
Patterson said there are three main areas of concentration: obtaining the proper equipment for emergency personnel, putting procedures in place to effectively use it and training on the procedures and equipment.
“It is costly to prepare for disasters and prepare for terrorism,” he said. “Soon we’re going to be receiving caches of equipment from the state for regional response.”
Detection equipment for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and personal protection devices (such as moon suits) are vital also, he said.