Weird Terror Drill in Los Angeles
April 17th, 2007You’ll love the script on this one. No really, be sitting down.
Via: Los Angeles:
Notice to Westsiders: Disregard the thwack-thwack-thwack of Black Hawk helicopter blades you might be hearing. The West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus is not, repeat not, under attack.
The California National Guard is slated to launch a three-day training exercise today titled Operation Vector. Plans call for a Hollywood-style convergence of a simulated natural disaster and faux bio-terror attack designed to test how well Guard teams work with local emergency responders. Much of the action will take place on the VA campus.
On Wednesday, the exercise is scheduled to continue in the Hollywood Hills with a fake chemical attack and at the Port of Los Angeles with the “siege” of a passenger-laden cruise ship (portrayed by a Coast Guard cutter). Thursday’s simulated disaster will be the collision of two airliners at Universal Studios.
…
The scenario will continue on the VA campus. The “tremor” will cause an “explosion” at a laboratory operated by an Al Qaeda cell. Plumes of smoke will rise from vacant Building 158, which will be sitting in for the terrorist lab. According to the script, the explosion will release ricin, a deadly toxin, and several “casualties” in need of decontamination will be rushed to UCLA Medical Center.
Research Credit: EP
*snort*
whoever is in charge of these things has been watching too many movies. are they bringing in Bruce Willis too?
seriously, the government and all its employees have lost their collective mind…
Many federal Homeland Security, (and some HHS), grant prgrams are now contingent on State/Local responders doing exercises that demonstrate now rigidly defined compentencies in the face of several very specific types of threats.
This creates unintended, and occasionally hilarious, side effect. State/Local responders, (or the consulting firms who run these things for them), now try to cram as many different types of threats into each event as they can manage, and have as many different sectors particpate as feasible.
Why?
These sorts of drills are extremely complex, expensive and disruptive for the locals, so while it may appear they are “gaming” the system, they are usually just trying to qualify for the most federal $ with the least amount of chaos. The chance to actually “interoperate” with agencies that they may not have much day to day contact with, (eg. ANG), is also a big attraction, so they get written into the script.
So, don’t be too concerned. It’s just the responders on the street trying to navigate the swamp that is DHS. However let’s hope “Alien Invasion” doesn’t get added to the threat matrix next year. Will Smith may not be available…
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_and_wireless&articleId=9016981&taxonomyId=15
why do you think all of the US’ blackberry emails are routed through Canada? Is this normal practice or a cost cutting measure?
Think of how many government officials and secret NGO information travels between these things.
I won’t fully play in to the conspiracy theory on the above “drill” but it is coincidental that it was followed by a nation wide communications black out on blackberries…
In LA, though nobody walks, you’ll still somehow find a crowd at the manned yellow-tape line at most “public-inconvenience” type events. Folks are inured to it, and a movie-set mentality of sorts seems to take over. That’s how it felt to me.
Back in Pedro, my regular workday was chewed up more than once by a film crew jumping vehicles off the particular hill outside my home office window. Who can concentrate on work when Pamela Anderson’s stunt double and two good-looking friends are about to launch a Ford pick-up and aa couple street-racer motorcycles off a ramp nearby?
Point Fermin, the Korean Bell, White’s Point and Royal Palms. Palos Verdes Drive East. Places most of you have seen and probably never known you have, especially in sporty car ads.
I’ll wager a deepest, darkest OC territory like Irvine had it’s fair share of crews disrupting traffic or taking over a famous local spot for a spell.
ELIMINATIONISM: coming soon to a theatre near you!
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-i.html
“White frat boys who long to enslave blacks, Texas ranchers who think hunting and shooting a Jew sounds like fun, and radio audiences who want to tattoo Muslims and lock them up in concentration camps — they all reflect the strands of the hard-wired right-wing desire to eliminate, by violent means if necessary, anyone deemed the Other, or the Enemy.”