About 400 volunteers posing as victims of the attack filed out of the National Exhibition Center here at 09:30 a.m. Police arrived 15 minutes after the staged incident and sealed off the area, followed by fire crews and ambulance staff.
But firefighters waited two hours before setting up green and yellow decontamination tents, where volunteers from the Army and the Red Cross were to be stripped and showered with disinfectants.
``Two or three years ago in an attack in Japan the emergency services were quick to respond and a number of them were killed,'' said fire service coordinator Phil Causer.
``We are controlling the incident and when it is appropriate we will deploy people. We need to protect these people so they do not become contaminated.''
Police officers in protective camouflage suits apprehended several mock victims who tried to escape from the contamination zone. Chief inspector Surjeet Manku of West Midlands Police said it took ``some time'' for officers to put on the suits.
``The purpose of the exercise is to see how quickly we can get our officers together, how quickly they can get their equipment on and how quickly the equipment can be deployed,'' he said.
``We need to look at why it took so long, whether decisions were rationally made and whether there were any communication difficulties.''
West Midlands Police said the drill, entitled Exercise Horizon, was the biggest of its kind ever staged in Britain.
