Operation Transit Safe

Yesterday, the NYPD, FDNY, and emergency services staged a subway bombing simulation at Bowling Green station to test the city's resources when reacting to a disaster (one bomb in the subway, then another undetonated bomb). There were a 1,000 workers in total, with 40 people acting as the "dead" and 170 people acting as "victims." Mayor Bloomberg told reporters, "The big things worked. People arrived, people communicated, people found the simulated bomb. They removed the simulated injured people." Even though Mayor Bloomberg expressed disgust when asked what didn't go well, the city's Emergency Management director said it was a success, though improvements would be needed on "deployment, placement of their vehicles and coordination" as everything can use a little improvement. Oddly enough, a call came in that a strange package was found a few blocks away, that forced some emergency drill particpants to check it out (it was a false alarm, luckily).

The Post reports that there was an incident between a police officer and firefighter (the officer threw the firefighter to the ground, claiming it was part of the drill, but that remains unclear). NYPD and FDNY agreed on a plan on how to coordinate how they respond to emergencies, such as bombings and biological attacks.