Response teams from several government agencies yesterday worked on coordination efforts in a rehearsal for the country's largest-ever cross-departmental chemical-attack drill to be held tomorrow in Taipei.
The rehearsal took place at the Hsiao-Nanmen stop of Taipei's mass rapid transit (MRT) system in a downtown district near the Presidential Office, the Ministry of National Defense and other government offices.
It simulated an emergency response to a sarin gas attack in an MRT car in which 45 passengers acted as victims. It was the second rehearsal for tomorrow's chemical-attack drill that is to be held at the same site. An earlier rehearsal was held last Friday.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
With the two rehearsals, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), which played a leading role in the organization of the first-ever cross-departmental chemical-attack drill, hoped that fewer mistakes would be made tomorrow.
In the first rehearsal, chemical-attack response teams from different departments, including the Taipei City police, the EPA and the military, were criticized as lacking coordination and synchronization in their efforts. It was the first time that these different teams had worked together in the same exercise at a public facility.
Those problems were not repeated in yesterday's rehearsal, which was acted out according to a script and came off largely without problem.
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"There is not much to complain about the rehearsal. The only thing I can complain about is that it was a well-scripted show. It's so well-scripted that I doubt whether the response teams could react so rapidly in a real situation," Shih said.
"Further, the chemical-attack response capabilities demonstrated in the rehearsal do not include the handling of a mass of people wounded in a gas attack. In a real event, the number of casualties would be much greater than demonstrated [here]," he said.
An army official who participated in the rehearsal said there are other serious problems with the design of the drill.
One of the problems is the reaction time that each response team needs to arrive at the scene and begin its action, the official said, who declined to be identified.
The army's 33rd chemical group, for instance, would require 115 minutes to reach the Hsiao- Nanmen MRT station and begin chemical-agent detection and decontamination procedures, according to information provided by the EPA. The group, which is located in Chungli, sent a battalion of troops to participate in yesterday's rehearsal.
The 33rd chemical group is the army's closest chemical-attack response unit to the Taipei metropolitan area.
Military police units, some of which have chemical-agent detection capabilities, need over half an hour to get their forces to the Hsiao-Nanmen MRT stop from their nearest equipped post.
The reaction times released by the EPA for each of the chemical-attack response teams varies widely between 33 minutes and 140 minutes.
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