An emergency preparedness exercise being conducted this week to test the readiness of Canadian authorities to deal with a terrorist attack during the 2010 Olympics found them facing radioactive snow, the Globe and Mail reported (see GSN, Nov. 3).
In that scenario, a terrorist with unclear affiliations adds radioactive material to snow and uses an artificial snow-making machine to spread the poisonous mixture at one event in Vancouver.
The devices operates for only a handful of minutes, but causes coughing and nausea among some in attendance. One individual falls to the ground. The event also sparks a panic, causing hundreds of people who have not been exposed to the snow to the hospital emergency room seeking treatment they do not need.
This is just one of the emergency simulations that government and security officials are tasked with handling over five days this week in preparation for the Winter Games in February.
John Oakley, a high-level official with Public Safety Canada, said the drills are meant to reassure the public of the government's ability to handle a terrorist attack.
Canadian academic Michael Byers said the threat of a radiological "dirty bomb" spreading radioactive material at the Olympics is very low.
"I don't exactly see why terrorists would choose to penetrate Olympic security to detonate a bomb when in normal circumstances in any big city such a bomb would create a comparable level of dislocation and draw a comparable level of media attention," Byers said.
The exercise started Monday with a call to police from the girlfriend of a man believed to be a member of a terrorist organization. A laboratory with chemical and radioactive materials was found in a subsequent inspection of the boyfriend's house.
In a call to police, terrorists then threatened to disperse radiological material from devices set up in as many as 20 different areas. One of those areas was a mall crowded with hundreds of shoppers.
The emphasis of an exercise yesterday was a chemical weapons strike at a rally held to cheer on Canada's hockey players. Another scenario this week is expected to assess the preparedness of first responders to deal with a yet-unidentified event in downtown Vancouver (Robert Matas, Globe and Mail, Nov. 4).