Next Monday thru Friday Oct.15-19 protest this worldwide Homeland Security & FEMA exercise which will be centered in the Phoenix area at the Crowne Plaza San Marcos Golf Resort in Chandler, Arizona on Chandler Blvd and Arizona Avenue (Country Club in Mesa). Chandler is part of the Phoenix metro area and about 15 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix

Map

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&addtohistory=&address=1%20N%20San%20Marcos%20Pl&city=Chandler&state=AZ&zipcode=85225%2d7870&country=US&geodiff=1

Contacts:

Chandler Police (480)782-4130

SAN MARCOS GOLF RESORT

ONE SAN MARCOS PLACE

CHANDLER, AZ 85225

800-972-3574

480-812-0900

For the first article see

http://arizona.indymedia.org/comment.php?top_id=70263

Arizona Republic

Sept 28, 2007

Federal authorities will descend on Chandler's

historic Crowne Plaza San Marcos Golf Resort in

October to stage one of the largest homeland security

exercises in the country, Federal Emergency Management

Agency officials announced this week.

Top Officials 4, or TOPOFF 4, will run Oct.15-19 and

involve various federal agencies along with

representatives from Australia, Canada and the United

Kingdom, officials said.

"San Marcos was a facility that could accommodate the

needs of the exercise," said Michael Murphy, spokesman

for the Arizona Department of Health Services, who is

assisting in communications for the exercise.

The hotel offered the government discounted per diem

rates, Murphy said. All the rooms will be occupied by

participants of the exercise.

The exercise will also take place in Oregon and Guam,

and combined will involve more than 15,000

participants, including the Chandler Fire Department,

in a full-scale, simulated response to radiological

dispersal-device attacks, FEMA authorities said in a

statement.

The devices are unconventional weapons that a

terrorist might use to destabilize a community. A

"dirty bomb" is one example.

The operation will focus on mass decontamination,

long-term recovery, prevention and intelligence.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1010topoff1010.html

Valley to host largest-ever terrorism drill

Sean Holstege

The Arizona Republic

Oct. 10, 2007 12:00 AM

The Phoenix area will be a focus next week of the

largest terrorism drill ever conducted, testing not

only Arizona's disaster readiness, communications

network and leaders but evolving plans to secure the

Super Bowl next year.

The drill, fourth in a series, takes on added

significance because it is the first since Hurricane

Katrina in 2005 exposed deep flaws in the government's

response to catastrophes and its handling of mass

evacuations. It also comes four months before Glendale

hosts the Super Bowl, an event that ranks among

presidential inaugurations and major political

conventions for security precautions.

The biennial exercise "will help us evaluate whether

our planning efforts are good enough, now, for the

future and for the Super Bowl," Arizona Homeland

Security Director Leesa Berens Morrison said.

Called TOPOFF because it involves top government

officials, the drill is designed to test for holes in

state and national emergency plans. It also aims to

determine whether key decision makers follow those

plans and can make timely, well-informed judgments

about when to evacuate or call in outside help.

Lessons from previous drills and incidents have led to

a greater emphasis on long-term recovery from an

attack and greater involvement of private companies in

the drill, said James Kish, director of the National

Integration Center, which oversees TOPOFF planning.

Typically, terrorism drills reveal that agencies

cannot properly communicate with one another. Radios

are on different channels and cellphones get

overloaded, meaning information does not flow smoothly

and key officials often don't know what's happening

soon enough, who can respond or what they can do.

Gov. Janet Napolitano has made unified communications

a top priority in the state security plan.

Still, synchronizing communications has remained

difficult nationwide because of technical challenges

and a Washington bureaucracy slow to standardize

equipment.



Super Bowl security

Planning for Super Bowl security began about a year

ago and is still not complete. The cost will run into

the millions, but no firm estimate exists yet.

The final plan to secure the University of Phoenix

Stadium for the Feb. 3 Super Bowl will build on

measures from previous championship games. Digital

license-plate readers will be deployed for the

Glendale game, said Sgt. Tim Mason, who has been

involved in planning for the state Department of

Public Safety.

Universal radios will be issued to everybody working

that day. If necessary, one direction of Interstate 10

will be shut down so all lanes can be used as an

evacuation route.

As in previous games, the Federal Aviation

Administration set up 10-mile no-fly zones around the

venues, with fighter jets patrolling the skies.

Thousands of extra uniformed and plainclothes police

will be on duty, along with bomb-sniffing dogs.

The Transportation Security Administration will

position heavily armed teams in high-traffic areas to

act as a deterrent to crime.

The government also will deploy digital cameras that

can pan a crowd or zoom in on a face or object in the

stands. And mobile bomb labs, X-ray sensors and

night-vision infrared devices will be used.

TOPOFF is designed to test the security measures.

"These are the only opportunities to see if our plans

have any holes in them. It's better that it occurs

before the Super Bowl," said Cam Hunter, who runs the

emergency preparedness office at the Arizona

Department of Health Services.



'Dirty bomb' scenario

TOPOFF, which runs from Monday to Oct. 19, will cost

Arizona $600,000 and will involve 26 state agencies,

15 cities, 11 counties, three tribes and 37 private

companies.

Arizona, Oregon, Guam and Washington, D.C., will

participate in the exercise that will involve 15,000

officials and coordinate with drills in Canada, the

United Kingdom and Australia.

The drill will take place only in conference rooms, on

plasma screens, over telephones and radios and in the

imaginations of the thousands of participants.

Officials will be reacting to three simultaneous,

simulated "dirty bomb" explosions. A dirty bomb uses

conventional explosives to spew radioactive waste over

a large area.

A dirty-bomb attack is one of 15 scenarios studied in

the National Response Plan, the government's blueprint

for handling national catastrophes. According to the

scenario, if a device exploded in a city, 180 people

would die and 36 square blocks would be contaminated.

Fallout would drift on the winds for up to 2 miles,

and people would have to be evacuated or shelter in

place.

If the Phoenix scenario played out, it would be worse.

The "explosion," planned for the intersection of Loops

101 and 202, could destroy key evacuation routes, and

the fallout could poison the Salt River.

Learning from Katrina



One question Arizona emergency planners want to answer

is how to evacuate large populations who have no means

of transportation, particularly if they fear

authorities or don't speak English.

After Katrina, the U.S. Department of Homeland

Security mandated that large cities, including

Phoenix, have a mass-evacuation strategy.

Morrison and Napolitano said they want to use the

drill to promote and test the state's 211 system and

corresponding Web site (www.az211.gov), both of which

are designed to get disaster information to the

public.

The Maricopa County Emergency Operations Center has a

database of those within 10 miles of the Palo Verde

Nuclear Generating Station who might need help

evacuating, but that list has not been expanded.

The Arizona Department of Transportation expects to

finish a statewide evacuation plan next year. TOPOFF

could lead to adjustments.

Katrina showed the government that it needed a

strategy for a long-term recovery. For the first time,

officials will follow up the drill with exercises

aimed at gauging recovery, and they will enlist

private industry that would have a stake in getting

the city running.

"The significance of this exercise is the physical

doing of it," Napolitano said. "It will give us

feedback about our chains of communication, allow us

to test our equipment and let us make sure everything

works the way it ought to."