Shopping malls to host emergency drills

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005 | 9:50 a.m.

The Galleria at Sunset and Meadows shopping malls will be the sites of the next large-scale emergency preparedness drill for local emergency responders, officials announced Wednesday.

The drill, named Operation Loaded Dice, will take place at the malls in Henderson and Las Vegas starting at 11 p.m. Oct. 6 and running through 5 a.m. Oct. 7. The exercise is planned to be a simulation of an attack from terrorists using improvised explosive devices.

Police, fire and other emergency responders from all public agencies in the Las Vegas Valley and Mesquite, plus 500 "victims" will participate in the drill, which is expected to involve about 1,000 people in all.

Tim McAndrew, the Las Vegas emergency manager, said the exercise is "intended to tax our resources" and also test the abilities of the many agencies involved to communicate with each other during a large-scale emergency.

Mike Cyphers, Henderson's emergency manager, said one of the major goals of the drill will be to see how well the agencies from the different jurisdictions interact with each other.

Cyphers also said that the malls are a good location to hold such a simulation because they are both places where large numbers of people typically gather. They are holding the drills overnight, a first for the valley, because that is when the malls are available.

The last large-scale drill, called Rotunda Thunda, was held from July 11 to 14 and involved about 1,200 emergency and medical personnel plus 180 "victims." That drill was mainly focused on dealing with a fictitious biological attack.

Because Loaded Dice will simulate a bomb attack, police and fire officials from the SWAT teams and bomb squads will also be involved in the October exercise, McAndrew said.

The Meadows drill is being paid for with a $250,000 federal grant.

The Henderson portion of the exercise is expected to cost less than $170,000, and is also being paid for with federal Homeland Security funds, Cyphers said.