Drill to simulate chemical attack on Princeton University campus.
By: David Campbell
It’s around 8 a.m. when the Princeton Borough police dispatcher gets the first call. A frantic Princeton University student is shouting something about a packed lecture hall being the target of a domestic terrorist incident.
As the 9-1-1 calls start to come in, so do the sketchy details. About 30 students have been exposed to an aerosol agent, possibly fed into the hall through a ventilation duct. It is still unclear whether the agent is chemical or biological, and whether other buildings on campus have been targeted.
In the panic that ensues, students have begun to run across campus to seek medical attention at McCosh Health Center. Others have driven themselves to The Medical Center at Princeton’s emergency room. Is the attack biological? If it is, there is the risk of contagion. If immediate action is not taken to contain the incident, many others will be exposed.
If you’re that police dispatcher, what do you do?
This is the sort of question Princeton health and emergency-response officials hope to ask and answer in a "full-functional" live drill scheduled to take place on the Princeton campus next month.
At the Princeton Regional Health Commission meeting Tuesday night, Princeton Health Official William Hinshillwood said preparations are under way for a drill on Oct. 20, which is a Sunday to minimize inconvenience to the public, that will test emergency procedures in a hypothetical "chemical event."
The staged incident is planned to take place in one of the university’s academic buildings. As many as 30 volunteers from the university will play the role of victims, some scripted to wander from the scene to the Medical Center, which is also taking part in the drill.
The drill is another sign of stepped-up efforts by local emergency-response officials in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the anthrax attacks last fall, which hit the Princeton community close to home.
The main Princeton post office in West Windsor was closed for about two weeks after anthrax was discovered there last October.
On Princeton’s campus, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs was temporarily locked down, with no one permitted to enter or leave the building, after a letter containing a reddish oily substance, which proved benign, was received there.
In addition, local law-enforcement and health officials responded to dozens of claims of suspicious mail. Some residents went to the emergency room at the Medical Center fearing they had been exposed.
"Princeton is a very well-known town," said Ted Cashel, Princeton Township’s emergency-management coordinator. "To say it won’t come here is very misleading. It’s been proven to date that it has been here. It may still come here."
Mr. Cashel would not reveal details of the scenario planned for October, but he said it is expected to involve personnel from all the local first-responder teams.
Participants include township and borough police; the Fire Department and first-aid squad; university officials and university medical staff; Medical Center personnel; and officials from the Health Commission and the Princeton Health Department, he said.
The Trenton Fire Department’s hazardous materials unit and other "mutual aid" organizations outside Princeton have been notified they may receive a call during the drill, Mr. Cashel said.
The real-life scenario, which is expected to begin around 8 a.m. and last no more than four hours, is being conducted under the National Emergency Management Program, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency administers.
FEMA will not be notified during the drill, though it would be in an actual incident. "If something really happened, you’d see more federal agencies coming in than there are abbreviations for," Mr. Cashel said.
But although a federal response is not part of the planned drill, that will not detract from the realism, he continued. In a real-life situation, a federal representative would be on the scene within an hour, but it would take from three to six hours for actual resources to arrive.
Until that time, local law-enforcement, fire and emergency-medical personnel would be on their own. Among other things, the drill will test how their actions in the early stages of a crisis, such as how police manage the crime scene to preserve evidence, coordinate with the anticipated arrival of federal resources, Mr. Cashel said.
The drill is scripted for the first 30 minutes. After that it takes on a life of its own, during which the participants will be critiqued by specially trained monitors, Mr. Cashel among them.
When the drill is over, the monitors will sit down with participants and tell them what they did correctly, and what they could do better.
"We’re making sure people can do what they’ve been trained to do, like a football team or baseball team," Mr. Cashel said. "In a real-world scenario, we’ve definitely seen it here (in Princeton). This is definitely real world."

