Practice Makes Safety:

20 AGENCIES COORDINATE FOR MOCK SHASTA DAM ATTACK

Bomb blasts that blew apart a car and a bus at Shasta Dam were
distractions to allow terrorists time to take hostages and control of
the nation's second-largest dam.

Luckily for the north state the dramatic scenario Wednesday was part
of a 12-hour terrorist drill at the dam and not real. The goal was to
ensure local, state and federal agencies could respond to such a
situation and reclaim the dam.

More than 250 people from more than 20 agencies took part, said Sheri
Harral, Shasta Dam's spokeswoman for the Bureau of
Reclamation.

"It's not just a couple of agencies," Harral said. "It's
20."

Led by the Bureau of Reclamation -- the federal agency that oversees
the massive concrete dam that creates Lake Shasta -- medical, fire and
police agencies responded to the mock terrorist attack. During the
drill the dam, the roads leading to it and a pair of popular fishing
boat ramps were closed.

Part of the Bureau's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise
Program, which started in 2003, the exercise was the first of its kind
at the dam, Harral said. Similar drills took place at Utah's Flaming
Gorge Dam in 2003, Washington's Grand Coulee Dam in 2005 and Hoover
Dam on the Nevada-Arizona line in 2008. A similar drill is set for
Folsom Dam next.

The federal government identified the six dams as possible terrorist
targets.

Harral said the reclamation bureau's role in the drill took 18 months
of planning and cost $500,000. The other agencies that helped in
planning and performing the drill covered their own costs.

The Shasta Dam scenario began with the two mock bomb blasts followed
by the "Red Cell" terrorist group taking over the dam in an effort to
free one of their fellow marijuana growers from prison. Holding three
people hostage, they threatened to flood the Sacramento River by
rolling open the drum gates atop the dam. Those gates hold back the
nearly full lake.

To show their seriousness in the drill, the Red Cell twice pretended
to release water from the dam. Each of the dam's three drum gates can
release up to 66,000 cubic feet per second when the dam is full --
198,000 cubic feet per second in all -- while the river's channel can
only handle 79,000 cubic feet per second, said Pete Lucero,
reclamation bureau spokesman in Sacramento.

Such a terrorist attack could flood parts of Redding and the Central
Valley.

"The river channel won't be able to handle the water coming out of
(Shasta Dam's) gates," he said.

In the end the Shasta County SWAT team raided the dam and the
hypothetical flood didn't happen.

"We had them go in, search for and neutralize the Red Cell," Lucero
said.

While the drill offered the bureau a chance to see how its security at
the dam would respond to such an attack, and the SWAT team the
opportunity to test its skills in the field, Lucero said it also
provided training for medics, firefighters and bomb squad members.

About 30 students studying to be firefighters played the role of the
bus bomb blast victims, with tags telling medics their injuries.

Near the end of the drill late Wednesday afternoon, Lucero said
everything went according to plan. He said it was too early to tell
what changes, if any, might be made as a result of problems discovered
during the drill.

"That we will know later on tonight and as we debrief it tomorrow," he
said.