Squads tackle mock terrorists and building collapse in drill
Source: Boston.com
Half a dozen SWAT commandos raided a Winthrop ferry boat loaded with a dozen hostages and two gunmen. A couple of miles away in Chelsea, a bomb squad robot inched toward a sedan loaded with explosives, parked near a rail line and massive fuel storage tanks.
At the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, crews chopped and sawed through concrete and steel to unearth victims trapped in a building collapse.
But it was only a test.
Dubbed “Urban Shield: Boston,’’ it was the first large-scale effort to get different types of first responders to train together for a terrorism attack or natural disaster that would require their collaboration. The network of events yesterday drew more than 500 rescue workers of different types from a host of area communities, including Boston, and from as far as California.
“We have to be prepared for everything,’’ said Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser yesterday morning, at the partly vacant Fore River Shipyard, where officials built a concrete obstacle tunnel designed to simulate rescue efforts like those undertaken in quake-ravaged Haiti.
“We have to be able to respond organically for the first 72 hours, before we could expect people from outside [to help],’’ said Fraser.
The $1 million exercise, scheduled to end this morning, peaked in a three-hour simulated terrorist attack yesterday at the Boston Marine Industrial Park on the South Boston waterfront. The event was modeled after the November 2008 assault by gunmen in the port city of Mumbai that took the lives of 175, including nine assailants. Planners set off the most realistic and dramatic simulation of the day, complete with controlled explosions, simulated live fire, and smoke, officials said.
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