Mock bridge collapse to test terror response starting Monday
By JACK STOREY/The Evening News
Story created May 05, 2005 - 11:42:43 EDT.
SAULT STE. MARIE - Many months in the planning, some 70 public agencies and at least 384 people will simulate a terror attack on the International Bridge in a three-day exercise starting Monday.
Coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard, the exercise will resemble Cold War disaster exercises in that the general public will hardly notice the mock "emergency" is in progress. Through the three days of the exercise, normal traffic on the International Bridge will not be affected.
Designed largely as a "paper" exercise, the three-day test of emergency preparedness will involve actual deployment of vehicles, vessels and personnel in only one or two instances. Most of the activity during the exercise will be among decision makers and subordinates gathered at two command posts for the mock drill.
The exceptions to the "paper drill" approach will be launch, assembly and construction of a floating "ribbon bridge" between Sugar Island and the Ontario shore near Payment. The 1437th Engineer Company, Michigan National Guard, will handle the floating bridge launch and assembly, spread over the three days of the exercise.
The marshaling of other emergency vehicles and vessels in response to the theoretical International Bridge attack will be dispatched and deployed only on paper.
It was not clear from a press briefing on Tuesday if various search, rescue and patrol vessels maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, City of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Ontario Provincial Police, Chippewa County Sheriff's Department and Department of Natural Resources will actually make way on the river during the exercise.
At a press briefing held Tuesday, Group Sault's Lane Putala said that although the International Bridge will, theoretically, be attacked and dismembered for the exercise, there will be no obvious delays in bridge traffic because of it.
In the scenario for the exercise, called Operation Bridge Out, a group of Arabic terrorists hijack a loaded fuel tanker truck, drive to the center span of the International Bridge and set off an explosion. The blast ignited the truck and its cargo, also igniting the asphalt running surface of the bridge and ultimately causing a span of the structure to warp and collapse.
The mock collapse will injure and kill a number of people and disable the International Bridge for an extended period.
The 1437th Company's floating bridge will become a kind of substitute span during the mock interim by connecting a bait shop boat launch on the Ontario side with the boat launch near Payment on Sugar Island. The theoretical connection with the mainland would be via the floating bridge and the Sugar Island ferry.
The ferry will also operate normally during the three-day exercise, except to transport National Guard trucks and equipment to Sugar Island for assembly of the floating bridge.
Putala said the 1437th will assemble sections of the floating ribbon bridge offshore of the Aune Osborn and Mission Street boat launches in Sault Ste. Marie on Monday morning. The partially assembled bridge sections will be floated around the north end of Sugar Island to the Payment boat launch for joining across the narrow reach of the old channel there.
He said the bridge will carry only a few small vehicles before the National Guard unit disassembles the military bridge and recovers its equipment.
Chippewa County Emergency Services Director Tim McKee said the exercise will also involve a test of the county's "Buffer Zone Protective Plan," but he declined to say what that plan is.
Regular traffic will not be carried on the floating ribbon bridge.
Local residents may expect a number of traffic delays on E. Portage Avenue Monday morning as the large fleet of National Guard vehicles moves from the Armory to the nearby Mission Street and Aune Osborn boat launches. Boaters are also likely to encounter considerable congestion of vehicles and vessels around those boat launches as the bridge launching operation continues through the morning.
While the principal emergency will apparently be the exploding tanker truck and International Bridge "collapse," Putala said Canadian agencies will also stage a mock tanker pollution incident in which a tanker truck falls overboard from the bridge, releasing 20,000 gallons of No. 2 fuel oil into the upper St. Marys River.
He said that Canadian exercise will involve use of the Soo Locks as a kind of partial oil pollution barrier. That Canadian exercise will also involve theoretical deployment of oil pollution control vessels.
Canadian police and security officials will also coordinate the "search" for the bridge collapse terrorists, who will theoretically escape the flaming tanker truck and return to Canada.
Three hundred fifty miles to the south, security, police, fire and other agencies will also hold a third theoretical emergency exercise around the Windsor-Detroit border crossing. Described as a diversion, that mock incident will involve a runaway tanker approaching the bridge and tunnel crossings in the Detroit River, Putala said.
The theoretical International Bridge collapse will, he said, block shipping at the Soo Locks for a period of 30 days. However, the section of the bridge selected for the mock tanker truck explosion in the exercise scenario lies well to the north of the Locks approach canals crossed by the U.S. arch of the International Bridge.
