TA-ANALYSIS: Simulated Terrorist Attack in UK Today

A major exercise simulating a terrorist attack is taking place todayin the UK (18th July 2004). So at least they are taking the threat seriously and attempting to ensure we are prepared should the unthinkable happen.



Hopefully this is just so we are prepared should the worst happen and not because they think there is a real and immediate chance of an attack occuring. It is good to see the government taking action in this way before something actually happens, god forbid, and we are taken off guard though.


[edit on 20-7-2004 by Banshee]

It is good to see this sort of exercise taking place, but the present state of the NHS infrastructure and the lack of hospital bed spaces sort of defeats the objective of the exercise.

We might end up with superbly trained emergency response to a CBRN attack, but nowhere to send the casualties. We need much more focus on the NHS infrastructure to enable those who are injured recover.

What is the use of rescuing CBRN victims only to have them die from MRSA infection caught from a contaminated hospital?


zero lift

According to the "victims" of this exercise, they would have died before being decontaminated. It was alleged that the coffee and cream cakes arrived before the emergency services

'Victims' unnerved by mock gas alert

By Peter Wilson
BBC Midlands Today, at Exercise Horizon



Volunteers acted as casualties of a mock gas attack
"We felt we would have died while we waited for the emergency services" is one family's experience of the UK's biggest mock terror exercise.

Standing in a car park for two hours with 400 other angry and confused nerve gas "victims" has left many unnerved at the prospect of a real terror attack.

Fed up with waiting, some have rushed the front doors of the NEC to try to find emergency crews themselves.

Like others, the Groce family say they felt abandoned by emergency crews.

Just after 0930 BST on Sunday several "suicide terrorists" played out a scenario of spraying nerve gas into a crowded hall 19 at Europe's busiest exhibition centre, near Birmingham.

The emergency services arrived minutes later, but until they were sure what they were up against no crews were deployed.

As one photographer commented, the coffee and cream cakes arrived before the emergency services.

Meanwhile, two army volunteers also found time to escape the exercise and grab a cup of coffee with expectant media crews mingling at what was called Exercise Horizon.

"We could have escaped into Birmingham but, because this is just a training exercise, we thought we would have a cup of coffee instead," they told reporters, leaving organisers with much to reflect on after the region's first full scale "disaster".

news.bbc.co.uk...


zero lift

Yeah the Brummies need to be prepared against a nerve/gas attack or they will all end up like Ozzy Osbourne with that cocktail of chemicals he took over the years.