Tourism promoters lobby against drill

No nukes, real or otherwise, would be great news to Sen. Harry Reid and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Reid and the LVCVA are both urging the Department of Homeland Security to ditch plans to stage a mock nuclear explosion in Clark County in May.

On Thursday, the Senate majority leader objected to the exercise in a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"I am deeply sympathetic to the need of our first responders to conduct preparedness training, and I look forward to revisiting this issue when Nevada's economy has improved," Reid wrote. "However, at this time, economic recovery efforts would be stymied, or reversed entirely, by artificially creating anxiety surrounding tourism and investment in Las Vegas."

In a similar letter Wednesday to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, LVCVA President and Chief Operating Officer Rossi Ralenkotter also blasted the blast exercise.

"Our destination already receives a disproportionate amount of attention when the Department of Homeland Security releases even the most routine bulletin," Ralenkotter wrote. "This exercise has the potential to escalate that attention and potentially harm our economy."

The LVCVA first raised concerns about the exercise at a September meeting with event organizers.

FEMA spokesman Clark Stevens said his agency will solicit feedback from all sides as it works out the details of the 2010 National Level Exercise.

"We will continue to reach out to key stakeholders, including state and local officials, to receive their input, as we prepare for and continue to develop this important event," Stevens said in an e-mail.

Organizers of the exercise met Thursday in Las Vegas to further plan the annual FEMA drill. The exercise, which is scheduled for May 17 to 21, will be the first set in Las Vegas. It has been in the works since late last year.

Nearly 10,000 local, state, and federal officials are expected to be in Clark County for the exercise. Another 15,000 are set to take part in other parts of the country.

Though no explosive devices will actually be detonated, Ralenkotter said, the premise of a mock nuclear attack in Las Vegas is troubling.

In the letter to FEMA's regional office in Oakland, Calif., he asked the agency, which is part of DHS, to consider "a non-nuclear scenario" for the exercise. He also requested that the simulation not be associated with the resort corridor.

It appears critics of the exercise have already won that concession.

The mock blast, according to homeland security officials, will not take place near the Strip, as originally planned. Instead it will be at Sunset Park near Sunset Road and Eastern Avenue.

"They've made half a step," LVCVA spokesman Vince Alberta said. "We're asking them to take a full step."

Alberta said a host of local business interests have also contacted FEMA with apprehensions about the exercise.

Homeland security officials say the Las Vegas drill centers on the aftermath of the hypothetical detonation of a 4.5-kiloton nuclear device, a blast equivalent to 4,500 tons of TNT. For comparison, in 1988, the deadly explosion in Henderson at Pacific Engineering and Production Co. generated a one-kiloton blast.

The emergency teams taking part in the exercise will set up at and around Sam Boyd Stadium. The "death toll" in the exercise will be about 6,000. Another 2,000 "victims" will need medical care.

The drill also involves the thwarting of a second attack in Los Angeles.

Citing a pattern of attacks at hotels around the world, anti-terrorism officials have said Las Vegas would make an attractive target for real terrorists.

A 2007 report by the Rand Corporation, a government-funded think tank, examined the consequences of an attack in Las Vegas. The report said a 5-kiloton nuclear bomb would cause about $50 billion worth of damage in Clark County, more than five times what the county's gross gaming revenue totaled in 2005.

The attention Las Vegas gets when terrorism warnings are issued, coupled with a struggling local economy, have business leaders "scratching their heads" over the drill, Alberta said.

"We just don't know if this makes sense right now," he said. "We want them to have an exercise. We're just asking them to change how they do it."

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.