LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press Writer
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AP Photos/Department of Justice, CDP/HO
First responders training at the Justice Department's Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala., practice the retrieval and evacuation of victims overcome by an unknown substance release in a cafeteria setting on July 2, 2002. The responders are wearing Level C suits, a simple Personal Protection Equiptment suit with a negative pressure respirator.
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ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) -- Smoke fills the cafeteria as a piercing alarm sounds. Panicked voices scream. Help them.
A few doors away, there's a bomb hidden in an office. Find it.
And down the hall, injured bodies litter a room. Who gets treated, and who gets left for dead? Figure it out.
These are a few of the challenges that firefighters, police and other emergency workers face when they come here to a former Army base for a different kind of boot camp. The goal, set well before Sept. 11, is to prepare first responders to handle a terrorist attack.
``We provide advanced hands-on training,'' said Giles Criter, chief of staff for the Center for Domestic Preparedness, part of the Justice Department. ``They can't do that at home.''
The idea for the center developed in the wake of a string of terrorist attacks in the 1990s, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City bombing and the release of sarin gas in a Tokyo subway. But before Sept. 11, Criter says, the reaction was typically ``a big ho hum and a yawn.''
Now, with the increased threat and heightened fears, the center is training 10,000 officers each year, many of whom go home to train colleagues who can't spend a week in Anniston. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge toured the center this summer and spontaneously suggested they double their numbers.
The week culminates with a trip to the ``hot zone,'' where nerve agents VX and sarin gas are released. Trainees climb into Level A biohazard protective suits, complete with individual oxygen tanks and sealed so they will not touch or breath any of the deadly chemicals. They run experiments to determine what gases are present, neutralize the material and collect evidence.
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``The reality really sets in,'' said Oliver Lin-Justiniana, 31, a sheriff's deputy in Columbia, S.C., who went through the training this summer. ``You're talking through a gas mask. There's no kidding around.''
Across the dusty roads of Fort McClellan, abandoned by the Army in 1999, sits a companion facility, the Noble Training Center, where hospital workers come for training. Run by the Department of Health and Human Services, the center uses a shuttered Army hospital to enact its own real-life scenarios.
The Center for Domestic Preparedness opened in June 1998 with a $2 million budget that had reached $18 million a year ago. A post-Sept. 11 emergency appropriation doubled the center's budget to $35.2 million, and officials there expect it to continue to grow.
Every room offers participants a different scenario. With the exception of the live agent training, where actual chemicals are released, all the situations are simulated, though some are remarkably realistic.
In a fake company mail room, trainees learn to identify a package that may contain anthrax.
In an ordinary-looking office where a bomb is suspected, they figure out where trouble lurks. Is it the book out of place on the shelf? The tile falling out of the ceiling? The cell phone lying on the floor? It turns out there's a pipe bomb at the bottom of a garbage can.
In the cafeteria, victims lie on the floor _ mannequins with symptoms detailed on paper. Sweltering in biohazard suits, trainees with flashlights affixed to their helmets rush in and figure out who can be saved.
Then they move to decontamination. Trainees learn about the $15,000, state-of-the-art showers their departments can buy to rinse any chemicals off victims. They also learn that a $296 kiddie pool from Wal-Mart will do the trick too.
They tour mock home laboratories. Drano and a collection of match books suggests production of methamphetamine, a common street drug. An aluminum exhaust pipe channeling air from the room suggests anthrax.
Then there's the teddy bear room, where dozens of stuffed bears are lying on the floor. Each one has a label around its neck listing its symptoms, and students have one minute to triage each ``patient.'' Each bear gets a colored tag: red indicates urgent medical attention is needed; green is for the ``walking wounded'' who can wait; a black tag means the patient is beyond help.
The label on one bear indicates that the patient, a young man in his 20s, has a sucking chest wound, burning in his eyes and labored breathing. It seems clear that he needs urgent medical help.
Wrong.
``Sucking chest wound?'' trainer Mellione Richards says. ``Black tag, move on.''
They leave with a deeper knowledge of both the threats they face and how they would handle them.
``The normal officer out here really doesn't understand the level these terrorists could attack us,'' said Ronnie Hinson, 28, a sheriff's deputy in Columbia, S.C. ``It gives you some information and understanding of what could happen, and what to do if it does.''
