VA town to be center of national emergency drill | 03.06.2007 | 05:28:29 | Views: 7022 | ID: March 6 '07: A two-part exercise in Hampton Roads, VA will gather emergency management officials, and federal, state and military officials to test emergency response operations simulating a simultaneous terrorist attack and hurricane along the East Coast, the Virginia Pilot reported. The exercise, called Noble Reserve, first simulate a sleeper terrorist cell detonating a "dirty bomb" after beaching near Norfolk. 72 hours after the terrorist attack, a class 3 hurricane is predicted to hit land in the area while several other international incidents complicate the scenario. The operational center for the terrorist attacks will be located at the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA. "The command is conducting the exercise to demonstrate how it can develop future concepts and capabilities and build partnerships at the state, national and international levels," the Pilot reported. Air Force Gen. Lance Smith told the Pilot, "It's a great experiment where we have taken all these skill set of modeling and simulation and modeled the whole Hampton Roads area with focus on Norfolk." Later in the exercise coordination center will be moved to Richmond to handle the hurricane response and recovery exercise, the Pilot reported. Those attending the exercises will include representatives from Northern Command, European Command, Strategic Command, Pacific Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, FEMA, the Department of Energy and the National Guard.
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