World Trade Center Holds Emergency Bomb Blast Drill

May 16, 2009— -- New York City's World Trade Center site was swarming with sirens and hundreds of police officers and firefighters Sunday morning for a drill funded by the Department of Homeland Security to test emergency response to a bomb explosion, and consequent on-site incident management, search and rescue, mass casuality medical support, intelligence and investigation, and communications.

City officials said the full-scale exercise was a success.

"Today's exercise was particularly important because it demonstrated the commitment our emergency personnel are making to training and to cooperation among both City agencies and other parts of government, " NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler in a statement.

NYC Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the exercise helped emergency responders "prepare for every possible situation."

Sunday's rescue events, deemed Operation Safe PATH 2009, were part of an emergency response drill to simulate an Improvised Explosive Device bomb explosion in the PATH light rail system that goes under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey and has its most important New York stop at the site of the World Trade Center.

New Yorkers were warned ahead of time not to panic after last month's Air Force One photo op fiasco triggered fear and memories of 9/11 in many eyewitnesses.

Over 800 emergency responders participated in the training exercise, which the city says was the largest drill of its kind in recent memory. And additional 150 members of the NYC OEM Community Emergency Response Team played victims during the incident to simulate a real attack.

"It's going to be the same kind of high-level response that people saw on 9/11," said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "If anybody lives in the neighborhood, they're going to hear lots of sirens and see lots of emergency vehicles."

The city did everything it could to notify residents and workers, Coleman said, which would have happened regardless of last month's photo op incident in lower Manhattan."From passing out literature to owners of residential buildings to notifying business owners to placing thousands of dollars of ads on TV and radio," Coleman said, "you name it, we've done it."

The PATH system was badly impacted by the Sept. 11 attack and, for a time, a train was trapped beneath the towers and just managed to get out before the collapse. Other railcars were crushed and left behind in the wreckage. Later, rescue crews went from New Jersey to New York in rafts in the half flooded tunnels to ensure no one was still trapped in the wreckage. No one was.

In 2006, mass transit in New York City was reported as a target of an early stage bomb plot.

In the aftermath of the London transit bombings that killed 52 people and wounded hundreds more on July 7 2005, and the Madrid rail bombings in March 2004, as well as a number of smaller rail attacks or attempted attacks in Germany, India and elsewhere, officials have spent a great deal of time both securing mass transit systems, installing surveillance in those systems, conducting random searches and using bomb sniffing dogs and technology in efforts to prevent attacks.

Nonetheless, experts say the prospect of such a relatively low tech, high consequence attack is real, and drilling to respond has become a fact of life in many jurisdictions with large transit systems.

The unannounced Air Force One flyover photo-op that drew angry criticism from eyewitnesses all the way up to President Obama ended up costing Louis Caldera, the director of the White House Military Office, his job. Caldera, who authorized the photo shoot that eyewitnesses said triggered 9/11 flashbacks, resigned Friday afternoon in a letter effective May 22.

"I have concluded that the controversy surrounding the Presidential Airlift Group's aerial photo shoot over New York City has made it impossible for me to effectively lead the White House Military Office," Caldera said in a letter to President Obama. "Moreover, it has become a distraction to the important work you are doing as President. After much reflection, I believe it is incumbent on me to tender my resignation and step down as Director of the White House Military Office."

The White House said President Obama accepted Caldera's resignation and asked Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to review the structure of the White House Military Office so that "such an incident never occurs again."

Also last Friday, the White House released its internal internal review of the fiasco as well as a photo from the flyover involving an Air Force fighter jet and a Boeing 747 which is sometimes used as the president's plane. Earlier, White House officials had said they had planned not to release the photo since news of the incident broke last week.

The report of the incident, which cost over $328,000 in taxpayer dollars and frightened a broad swath of lower Manhattan, site of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers, and neighboring New Jersey, says Caldera "did not offer a coherent explanation" for why he didn't alert higher-ups about the Air Force One flyover. "He stated that it was not a conscious decision – he did not decide not to notify them," the report says. "Instead, he suggested that it may have been an oversight."

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