Nevada prepares for emergency drills

Jace Radke

Friday, March 7, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

Nevada's state and local emergency management officials will help the military determine if it is ready to respond to a catastrophic emergency that overwhelms all other resources.

The drills are expected to run from Aug. 18-29 in cities across the country, including a day or two of exercises in Nevada.

The drills will simulate a large-scale emergency that overwhelms the resources at the local, state and federal levels and forces the military into action, Clark County Emergency Manager Jim O'Brien said.

"It's really an exercise to test the military's ability to get support and supplies to civil authorities," O'Brien said. "It would have to be a massive event. Even something like the World Trade Center towers wouldn't cause this because in that example the regional network wasn't exhausted."

The drills will be in state and county emergency operations centers and various Defense Department locations, O'Brien said.

State and local officials will probably participate, he said.

The simulation is part of an evaluation being conducted by the U.S. Northern Command, which was activated in October 2002 to bring all the military agencies working on homeland security under one command.

Northern Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., has a policy of not talking publicly about its exercises to protect operation security, spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said.