From April 4-8, some 275 federal, state, local and private organizations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom — a cast of about 10,000 players — participated in TOPOFF 3, the largest test in history of our capacity to plan for, respond to and recover from a terrorist attack.

Two years in the planning and costing an estimated $16 million, the exercise simulated nearly simultaneous twin attacks: a chemical release in New London, Conn., and a biological attack in New Jersey. TOPOFF 3 also was the country's first internationally played exercise, requiring communication with incident command centers and emergency management officials in the United Kingdom and Canada. A total of 13 countries sent observers.

According to the scenario, terrorists plotted to attack New York City and Boston, but when their plan was compromised by U.S. intelligence efforts, they switched the targets. Terrorists set off an improvised explosive device releasing deadly chemicals among crowds at a spring festival on a New London military base. Dozens of victims lay in the sun as two automobiles burned. Meanwhile, 155 miles to the south, a mock biological attack was under way in New Jersey, setting off a test of the state's biomedical response capacity.

New Jersey was hit by flooding, adding a whole new dimension to the test. “We knew TOPOFF was going to challenge our emergency response system,” said New Jersey Acting Governor Richard J. Codey, “but we could never have predicted the challenge was going to be made that much harder by the worst flood of the Delaware River in recent memory. Today I'm proud to say New Jersey came through on both fronts.”

The exercise was sponsored by the DHS Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. According to a DHS senior official, the exercise had four major goals:

• Test the full range of incident management processes and protocols in the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System, spanning prevention, intelligence, information-sharing, and response and recovery.
• Assess information-sharing across all levels of government in the United States, the private sector, and Canada and the United Kingdom.
• Test public communications strategies, protocols and processes across all levels of government to communicate the physical damage associated with a WMD terrorism attack.
• Produce a comprehensive after-action report that captures the lessons learned from all parties involved.

DHS will spend the next four to six months compiling information gathered for the after-action report. The report will be shared with states through the secured Lessons Learned Information Sharing Network Web site at www.llis.gov; DHS will present another version to the public without certain sensitive information at www.dhs.gov/topoff3.