Operation Poseidon drills New England first responders | 08.29.2006 | 05:31:13 | Views: 5130 | ID: August 29 '06: Massachusetts state officials, first responders, the medical community and every level of law enforcement in the state will cooperate in the region's largest disaster response exercise about one week after the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, the Boston Globe reported Tuesday. The exercise, called Operation Poseidon will "build on the lessons learned from Operation Atlas", a similar response drill in the area. Poseidon is sponsored by Boston's Executive Office of Public Safety and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's Office of Homeland Security. "The exercise is designed to bring together federal, state, and local agencies, as well as hospitals and the National Guard, to coordinate and improve how they respond, communicate, and work together to tackle the fast-moving series of threats." Those threats, the Globe reported, include: an explosion in a basement lab in a Boston suburb followed by a threat at a liquid natural gas facility in the same town - Everett. The situation then "mushrooms to multiple explosions, one involving a radioactive 'dirty bomb' inside the CabirdgeSide Galleria mall," the Globe reported according to an internal memo it obtained. Peter Judge, the spokesman of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency told the Globe, Operation Poseidon is "really the best way to make sure everyone is working well together." The previous exercise - Operation Atlas - involved more than 50 federal, state and local agencies who participated in a simulation airline hijacking. 80 volunteers who posed as hostages on an international flight from Paris spent two hours in the air while officials on the ground and the flight crew worked to handle the situation. A federal homeland security grant of about $750,000 was used to fund the operation. Once F-15 fighter jets "forced" the landing of the airline, officials stormed the airline and arrested the terrorists on board, but not after a 14-year-old girl was "killed" by the hijackers. Those left "injured" from the ordeal were sent to area hospitals.
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