By JENNIFER L. BROWN, The Associated Press
McALESTER, Okla. - For three days, this town will be the site of one of the most complex bioterrorism drills ever undertaken, complete with a low-flying airplane simulating an attack run and 10,000 packets of jelly beans used in place of real medicine.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the discovery (news - web sites) of anthrax in mail weeks later left many Americans concerned about what would happen if a bioterrorism attack targeted their town. The exercise in McAlester, a town of 18,000 in eastern Oklahoma, is designed to determine how well authorities would react.
“In McAlester, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma as a whole, the likelihood of a biological attack is hopefully very small,” said Dr. Timothy Cathey, medical director for the Pittsburg County Health Department. “But we’ll be able to share this information with other communities.”
In the drill, which was to begin Friday, authorities were to pretend that a low-flying transport plane sprayed deadly pneumonic plague on McAlester. If it actually hit McAlester, the lung-attacking plague could wipe out the town’s population in four days.
Within three hours of the “attack,” officials planned to start distributing thousands of packets of make-believe medication - jelly beans and fruit punch.
The drill was to continue Saturday and wrap up on Monday.
The idea for the exercise came in October, as Americans were worrying that crop-dusting planes could be used to spray biological weapons.
“The country has been thinking about what we need to do to be best prepared long before Sept. 11,” said Jim Gass, special projects officer for the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. “Of course, now it’s taken on more meaning.”
The drill, called “Sooner Spring,” is a follow-up to a national program at Andrews Air Force Base called “Dark Winter.” In that exercise - conducted last summer - officials pretended that Iraqi-financed Afghan terrorists were spraying the smallpox virus into shopping centers in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and Atlanta.
In addition to the pneumonic plague scenario in McAlester, there will be a mock outbreak of smallpox in Tulsa and a staged attack of botulism in the water in Lawton.
Army researchers are also planning to simulate a biological and chemical attack off the coast of Florida starting Monday to determine if weather radar systems can detect weapons agents dispersed by crop-dusters. A small plane will release harmless agents similar in composition to biological and chemical weapons to test the long-range radars.
Oklahoma officials said the McAlester drill is perhaps the most complex one ever because of the level of community involvement. Nearly 700 volunteers plan to distribute 10,000 doses of jelly beans to adults and 1,000 pediatric doses of fruit punch within 24 hours.
Residents, who learned about the drill from newspaper and radio reports, have a chance to win prizes donated by local businesses if they show up at one of seven medicine distribution sites on Saturday.
McAlester officials were to collect the fake medicine from local pharmacies, giving it to health care workers, law officers and their families. They also planned to put in a mock request for the drugs from the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile - real, though secret, stashes of medicine at locations throughout the United States.
An Army National Guard unit in Oklahoma City was to practice sorting the drugs and then fly medical supplies by helicopter to McAlester.
Dr. Robert Petrone, bioterrorism and response coordinator for the state Health Department, said officials will meet after the drill to discuss how they can improve their response to a biological attack.
Organizers expect the exercise to go smoothly because preparations have gone well - and that’s a big part of the point of the drill, Petrone said.
“Ninety percent of the benefit has already been accomplished,” he said. “It’s really been a success beyond my imagination.”