Tower Drill

By Carl Glassman
POSTED JUNE 1, 2007

The scenario was an ugly one. A bomb explodes on the 50th floor of 7 World Trade Center. There are dead and injured lying in the smoky aftermath, and firefighters, EMS workers and Port Authority police must respond.

That was the drill on a recent Sunday morning when about 100 firefighters and medical personnel, as well as Battery Park City’s CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) converged at the tower. For about two hours, the emergency workers filed in and out of the building, at times wheeling volunteer “victims” on gurneys they had whisked from the (theatrical) smoke of the 50th floor.

“It’s not like a real fire, but it’s as good as you can do without burning the building down,” said Dave Raynor of Rescue 1.

The drill also served as a test of the city’s broadband wireless network, now live in Lower Manhattan, that can transmit video and data from a disaster onto a network. In this case, emergency officials watched the 50th floor scene unfold on a laptop monitor in the 7 World Trade Center lobby.
The Fire Department is “pushing the technology community” to develop better communication methods and information sharing, said Joseph Pfeifer, the department’s chief of counterterrorism. “Nine-eleven created a sense of urgency,” he said.

Pfeifer said the 7 WTC drill evoked painful memories of the losses on that day. But, he added, “I really think it’s important that the community looks at this not as a similar tragedy in the past, but one of preparedness for the future.”

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