Evaluators watch as firefighters attend to a mock victim during a simulated suicide bombing Thursday night at Meadows mall. The exercise was designed to test emergency response to a terrorist attack that included bombings at several sites across the Las Vegas Valley. Photos by Isaac Brekken/Review-Journal
A mannequin representing a bombing victim sits in the Meadows mall food court surrounded by smoke during a training exercise for firefighters, police and other emergency personnel.
The parking lot was dark and quiet when the dispatcher called out over the radio.
"All units respond," she said. "Explosion at the Meadows mall."
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Within minutes, a fire engine pulled into the lot and parked in front of the mall.
Two more engines emerged from the darkness and staged at the far end of the parking lot. Two ambulances joined them.
The radio soon buzzed with a report of mass casualties, and the parking lot quickly filled with dozens of emergency vehicles and hundreds of "victims," firefighters, police and other emergency personnel taking part in the Southern Nevada's latest terrorism response exercise.
Dubbed Operation Loaded Dice, the exercise was a staging of a series of suicide bombings at locations across the Las Vegas Valley, but the major activity took place at the Meadows and Galleria at Sunset malls.
About 1,000 workers from Clark County, the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies took part in the six-hour drill, which started shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday.
The operation was funded by a $250,000 federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
Operation Loaded Dice was the second terror drill in Las Vegas this year. In July, about 80 local, state and federal agencies undertook Operation Rotunda Thunda, which simulated an attack on the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Strip.
In the 2003 Operation Determined Promise, various local agencies practiced responding to a biological attack on the Strip in an exercise that lasted 12 days at a cost of $2 million.
Officials said the main reason the latest drill was not conducted on the Strip was because it cannot be closed down like the malls.
"What we're trying to do is include private industries where a lot of people gather," Las Vegas emergency management coordinator Tim McAndrew said.
The scenario simulated multiple suicide bombers carrying chemical explosives into mall food courts, where a few of the terrorists took hostages when their explosives didn't go off. Some of the skills practiced included emergency medical response and decontamination, McAndrew said.
He said interagency coordination is one of the areas of emergency response that will improve because of the fact that specialty crews such as SWAT and hazardous materials teams usually work alone.
