CHESTERTOWN, Md. (AP) -- On any other day, the sight of two monster CH53 helicopters unloading Marines onto an athletic field at Washington College would be terrifying.
On Wednesday, it was just a day of training for Marines who are part of an anti-terrorism brigade stationed at Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head.
About 200 soldiers, many of whom decontaminated Capitol Hill office buildings after anthrax and ricin attacks, streamed out of helicopters and hazmat vans Wednesday morning to ``rescue and treat'' 200 volunteers posing as victims trapped in a dormitory.
The purpose of the drill was to train Marines and local emergency workers how to coordinate a response to a real chemical weapons attack. Local, state and federal responders _ in that order _ would be called to action if a dirty bomb exploded.
Without drills to determine how those multiple agencies would coordinate, the result might be chaotic, organizers said.
``Everything we do to rehearse and hone our response capabilities makes us better at this,'' said Maj. Matt Morgan, a spokesman for the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. ``Every time we rehearse, it makes us more capable and more able to save lives.''
The anti-terrorism brigade, headquartered in Camp Lejeune, N.C., conducts the drills nationwide about once a month _ most recently at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.
The Marines enlisted about 100 volunteer firefighters and emergency workers from Kent County to participate in the six-hour practice run Wednesday. Staging a disaster in a rural area is good practice for small emergency departments as well as brigade soldiers, some of whom rode in vans over a partially closed Chesapeake Bay Bridge to reach the upper Eastern Shore, Morgan said.
Kent County has no professional fire companies, only eight ambulances and no hazmat team, said Chris Powell, chief of a local volunteer fire department in Galena.
``It's perfect to show the county how limited we are in our resources. We make do with what we've got,'' Powell said.
In a disaster like the one staged Wednesday, ``We'd be over the realm of what we could handle,'' said Powell, who also is president of the county's association of fire chiefs.
The drill focused on a terrorist tactic security officials say is being used more often over the last eight or nine months: exploding a bomb to draw emergency workers, then launching a second attack to target the rescuers. Marines arrived Wednesday to see a burned up car, with its top sheared off and a white powder sprayed on the side of the dorm and its sidewalks.
Several firefighters stumbled out of the dorm, pretending to be overcome by an industrial chemical gas.
``The human impulse in a scene like this is to charge in, and first responders will suffer injuries in most cases,'' Morgan said. ``But our guys have the ability to look at it and say that to save lives, we have to approach this methodically.''
Soldiers rescued volunteers, some of whom wore rubber casings on their legs and arms to mimic raw, open wounds. Some ``victims'' were carried out on plastic sleds to a triage area to be decontaminated and treated.
``Can you walk?'' Marines, yelled to volunteers, some of whom fell into a clump at the bottom of a dark stairwell. Soldiers asked each if they suffered tightness in their chests, difficulty breathing and burning eyes. Each volunteer was told ahead of time what symptoms to report.
Morgan said organizers will spend the next few weeks reviewing the rehearsal to determine areas that need to be improved, for a focus of a future drill.
