More info is starting to come out about the holiday Orange Alert, including an intense hunt for possible radiological bombs.
With huge New Year's Eve celebrations and college football bowl games only days away, the U.S. government last month dispatched scores of casually dressed nuclear scientists with sophisticated radiation-detection equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags to scour five major U.S. cities for radiological or "dirty bombs," according to officials involved in the emergency effort.Posted by Alan at January 7, 2004 10:59 PMThe call-up of Department of Energy radiation experts to Washington, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Baltimore was the first since the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was conducted in secrecy, in contrast to the very public cancellation of 15 commercial flights from France, Britain and Mexico.
Details of the government's search for a dirty bomb help explain why officials have used such dire terms to describe the reasons for the nation's fifth "code orange" alert, issued Dec. 21 by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. U.S. officials said they remain worried -- more concerned than much of the public realizes -- that their countermeasures would fail.
Even now, hundreds of nuclear and bioweapons scientists remain on high alert at several military bases, ready to fly to any trouble spot. Pharmaceutical stockpiles to treat biological attacks were loaded on trucks at key U.S. military bases.
On the same day that Ridge raised the national threat level to orange or "high," from yellow or "elevated," the Homeland Security Department sent large fixed radiation detectors and hundreds of pager-size radiation monitors for use by police in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit.
Starting Dec. 22, the teams criss-crossed those cities, taking measurements 24 hours a day.
via the Houston Chronicle