Preparing for an urban WMD attack

On Saturday, the San Francisco Fire Department, along with a group of other public and private agencies, ran a large-scale training exercise revolving around an urban weapons of mass destruction terrorist attack. Here, an emergency worker in a full hazmat suit examines the faux chemical that was supposedly found in the attack, which was said to be sodium cyanide, a poison that quickly affects peoples respiratory systems. On the ground behind, volunteers playing the role of dead victims lay prone. (Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)
SAN FRANCISCO - “Weapons of mass destruction multi-agency exercise.”
If I’ve ever covered an event with a more stark title, I can’t think of it.
But there I was Saturday morning, along with several hundred firefighters, police officers, Army National Guard personnel, and members of other local, state, and federal agencies for a large-scale exercise designed to help train all these emergency responders how to deal with a major terrorist attack involving suspected chemical weapons or other bio-hazards.
Tags: Biological weapons, chemical weapons, firefighters, Government, Military, nuclear, nuclear attack, Nuclear weapons, Police, terrorism, terrorists, U.S., weapons of mass destruction, WMDs

