DRILL PREPARES FOR AN ANTHRAX ATTACK GOAL WAS TO TREAT 1,500 IN AN HOUR.

Byline: Alex Dobuzinskis Staff Writer

GLENDALE - Public health officials gathered 1,500 volunteers into the Glendale Civic Auditorium on Thursday for a simulated bioterrorism drill designed to prepare emergency response crews for an anthrax attack.

While the exercise went smoothly, some officials still questioned how the response would be in an actual terrorist strike with the lethal bacteria.

``People say, 'Are you prepared?' That's not the right question,'' said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's director of public health. ``The right question is, 'Are you better-prepared today than you were yesterday? Are you better-prepared tomorrow than you were today?'

``That's the right question. I think the answer to that question is yes.''

Los Angeles County organized the event as part of a series of exercises.

A crowd of volunteers mostly made up of students carried forms describing pretend anthrax symptoms. Health workers glanced at the forms as they sent the ``patients'' off to different tables to be given ``medication,'' if they needed it.

Officials sitting on a stage watching the exercise start heard a near-continuous beeping coming from a nearby device being set off by the ankle bracelets worn by the participants. Organizers used the technology, borrowed from long-distance marathons, to count how many people they were treating in the simulation.

The goal set by the federal government for the exercise: 1,500 people processed per hour.

``This is going pretty well because people are not panicked,'' said Glendale City Councilman Bob Yousefian. ``But on the day that this - God forbid - happens, you're going to have panic set in so it's not going to go as smooth.''

The bacteria that causes anthrax turned up at post offices and on Capitol Hill in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Authorities never found out who mailed the bacteria.

Anthrax is a deadly disease caused by contact with bacillus anthracis, not by person-to-person contact, and it kills most victims who do not get treatment in time. But survival chances greatly increase with antibiotic treatment, Fielding said.

Steve Guerrero, 28, a health teacher at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, brought 40 of his students on a field trip to participate in the exercise as volunteers.

``It's pretty smooth,'' Guerrero said. ``I think this exercise is a lot better for us who understand it, as opposed to the students, who are just here to get out of school for a day.''

Officials did not expect to know until today whether they met the goal of processing 1,500 people in an hour, which would be the first time that many people had been processed in any bioterrorism exercise nationwide.

Alex Dobuzinskis, [phone]

alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Emergency volunteers count bottles of ``medicine'' for ``patients'' supposedly exposed to anthrax during Operation Chimera, a bioterrorism drill at Glendale Civic Auditorium on Thursday to prepare emergency response crews to deal with the real thing.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer