City tests terrorist attack response

The terrorist threat level in the U.S. on Tuesday was yellow, or elevated (in the middle on Homeland Security’s scale), but in the Laguna Beach City Hall employee lunch room, also known as the city’s Emergency Operations Center, the threat level was red — the highest.

Top-level city employees, police officers, firefighters and others sat around a table hammering out a response to a simulated car bomb attack at Santa Ana Stadium that had severely damaged the Sheriff’s Department headquarters, the Orange County jail and other public facilities.

An incident that was initially reported with 30 casualties and five times that number of injuries quickly escalated to “mass casualties” at the jail and a lockdown at all county schools.

A layer of smoke was detectable in Laguna, and cell phones were tied up.

With two-dozen sites in the city considered potential terrorist targets, city officials had a bewildering number of issues to face.

The questions were many, including: how many “first responders,” if any, to send to Santa Ana or elsewhere, depleting the city’s ability to respond on its own turf; how to keep public safety personnel in Laguna Beach when their families could be in jeopardy in other cities; how much information to release to the public and the press in order to avert mass panic and control rumors.

In addition to police and firefighters, also on duty were the city’s finance officer, water-quality chief, public works and lifeguards.

During the morning, the situation escalated as new information came in from the sheriff’s department.

Pretty soon, the mayor was on the phone asking if city meetings needed to be canceled (City Council was quickly canceled and instead sent into closed session away from City Hall) and citizens were calling in frantically for information.

A dispatcher asked how she could answer citizens’ questions if she wasn’t privy to the news that was coming in; the answer was that she shouldn’t be fielding those calls.

The mayor called back, saying she was being asked for a statement by the media — what should she say about conditions in Laguna Beach, or should she simply use the official county press statement released hours ago that had no local information?

It was all part of a countywide Urban Area Security Initiative simulation involving every single city in the county, Laguna Beach Police Det. Joe Torres said.

Torres was coordinating the simulation, while Police Capt. Danell Adams challenged the group, asking at every juncture, “What do you do now?”

Adams was the coordinator at a recent simulation at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station just last week.

Such simulations are becoming more common as the Department of Homeland Security attempts to broaden training to handle potential domestic terrorist threats.

Adams said that the training is being geared to include all city employees, since any and all of them could be pressed into service during such an emergency.

“City employees are learning how to handle public safety matters since police and firefighters will be in the field,” she said.

In a real incident, the presence of uniformed people in the Emergency Operations Center will likely be few and far between.

City employees will likely be answering the phones, not police dispatchers — and will need three days’ worth of clothing and food on hand in the event of a major incident.

One hot topic of conversation was whether city employees will be required to stay on the job, and how to keep them here if their families are in jeopardy elsewhere.

The answer: Ask the hotels to open up rooms for city employees’ families, so they will be relatively safe and near their loved ones.

As for others who may be unable to get home, the Red Cross was called to set up a shelter at the high school gymnasium.

When Adams noted that the city has a large supply of MREs (military-issued 3,000-calorie meals) and drinking water, some in the group said they would rather see if the city’s restaurants would like to contribute their own MREs instead.