Canada Prepares For Olympics With Mock Terror Drill

Authorities in Vancouver Canada staged a mock terror attack Tuesday in an effort to prepare for the real thing during the 2010 Olympic Games.

The make-believe was part of the final formal security drill “to confirm that federal, provincial, regional, and municipal organizations are prepared to respond in a coordinated manner to any emergency that may occur during the 2010 Winter Games,” said Public Safety Canada.

The week-long exercise in this western Canadian metropolis also includes flyovers by Canadian and American military jets and an incident Thursday at a railway station.

The mock attack involved as many as 2,000 police officers, firefighters, government specialists and military, said Jaimie Tomlinson of Public Safety Canada.

The exercise played out like live theatre in a school playing field in the suburb of Richmond.

Actors pretended to have been poisoned by deadly radioactive isotopes and were rescued by firefighters dressed in hazardous-materials suits who hosed them down in the chilly autumnal air, removed their contaminated outer clothes, and wrapped them in emergency blankets.

“What we have here is a fictional terrorist group planning to disrupt the games in order to draw attention to their cause,” said federal spokesman Ted Sykes.

The script concerned a girlfriend reporting her terrorist boyfriend to police, which set in motion an attack in which deadly radioactive isotopes were released in some 20 public places, including a shopping mall and in the school field, where a rally was being held for Canada’s hockey team.

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