City teams drill in tunnel of terror

BY ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

STANDARD, W.Va. - A woman's screams seep out from deep inside a collapsed tunnel.

"Help me!" she cries. "Somebody help me!"

But before cops and firefighters charge into the ruins, members of the elite New York Urban Search and Rescue Task Force remember a warning.

"No freelancers," FDNY Battalion Chief Joe Downey had cautioned. "No one goes in the tunnel alone."

The tunnel is in West Virginia, not New York City. The screaming woman is a preschool teacher named Mikki Scott, and she's not in any real danger.

But in the age of terrorism, an attack on one of the city's tunnels is no longer unthinkable. The 80 city cops and firefighters taking part in this doomsday drill yesterday at the Center for National Response are deadly serious.

"It's pretty realistic," NYPD Emergency Service Unit member Donald LaSala said yesterday. "As a training session, it's the toughest I've seen."

The feds created New York's elite task force from the best rescue teams of the NYPD and FDNY.

The task force handles emergencies around the country - both natural and man-made. New Yorkers benefit from their cops, firefighters and emergency management officials training together.

"It comes back to that whole battle of the badge thing," says Fred LaFemina, a battalion chief for FDNY Special Operations. "If we work together here, it will be easier on the streets of New York."

Standing in for a city commuter tunnel is an abandoned, 2,800-foot highway tunnel in this sleepy town, about 600 miles from New York.

The scenario is sickening: A blast seals off the tunnel and traps hundreds of motorists during the morning rush hour.

Surveillance cameras flash a few grainy images of bloody, dazed survivors covered in dust and screaming for help.

Nobody knows what caused the blast, and the joint rescue team has 32 hours to save whoever is still alive.

Smashed cars are piled up, two and three deep. Pieces of concrete are stacked like poker chips. Smoke rises from unseen fires and a small canister is leaking radiation.

Helmeted rescuers clear a path and send two hazardous materials experts deeper into the debris.

Using thermo-cameras, they find 11 "victims" and work to get them out.

"Wherever you go, there's something to deal with," said NYPD Deputy Inspector Gin Yee of the Emergency Service Unit. "It is training that is very, very real."

Originally published on June 22, 2005

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