How ready are our communities for an attack?

In Philadelphia on November 10th a practice drill stretched thin the medical response teams. The drill included three major transportation hubs with three pretend suicide bombers activating dirty bombs within 10 minutes of each other. One of the bombers was designated as HIV positive whose spattered blood made contact with hundreds of people, some already injured.

The drill had 11 hospitals responding.

The pretend victims testified that the drill was so terrifying and realistic that it was easy to act out screams, panic and even shed real tears. The victims had been made-up with blisters, blood, hanging appendages and dolls for mothers whose babies had died. Included with the victims were many people who did not speak English.

This was one of the largest multi-hospital drills held in the US. The entire drill was sponsored by a grant and was designed to kick-off a conference, sponsored by Jefferson Hospital, on terrorism for health care and emergency response professionals held the following week.

The results? The drill went well, but proved that they are not prepared to handle the aftermath of a real attack. This was evident even after the hospital was given warning to beef-up their ER staff so their ER operations would not be interrupted. In the case of a real attack, there would be no warning, and the hospital would be working with its normal staff. One of the doctors stated that, "We're going to have a lot of deathsÓ because Òif such an event were to happen it real life, busy hospitals could easily be overwhelmed."