A prank call marred the synchronized anti-terror exercise at the Saipan Harbor yesterday morning, with law enforcers rushing to a reported chemical spill on Middle Road, which turned out to be a hoax.<\/p>\n
Law enforcers from the Department of Public Safety and other first responders turned on their sirens and hastily responded to the alleged chemical spill incident on Middle Road after a caller notified authorities of the incident before 11am.<\/p>\n
Authorities, however, found no chemical spill or the caller who claimed to have come from the hospital. The call is still being determined if it was a deliberate prank or part of the exercise.<\/p>\n
According to Sgt. Tony Macaranas, they received a call for assistance before 11am when the exercise was just about to end. Law enforcers immediately rushed to the scene and made immediate inquiry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no chemical spill. I don\u2019t know if it was a prank call. But there was no incident there,\u201d said Macaranas.<\/p>\n
Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Division chief Stanley Torres Jr. said a portion of the exercise included a call from the hospital about a chemical spill but the caller was supposed to notify law enforcers that the call is part of the exercise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hospital should tell them that it is the exercise. But there was no word \u2018exercise\u2019 so police officers went out to check it. They immediately responded to that incident,\u201d said Torres in a separate interview.<\/p>\n
Operation Safe Harbor is a full-scale anti-terror attack exercise to test the coordination, cooperation, and the first-responders skills in case a chemical and explosive attack incidents.<\/p>\n
The exercise, which began at 8am and ended in an ARFF briefing around 4pm, was hosted by the Emergency Management Office in coordination with the EG&G Technical Services. <\/p>\n
EMO director Rudy Pua said the exercise intends to evaluate first responders and response agencies protocols in responding to a weapon of mass destruction terror incident. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe operation will provide an opportunity for team training of local agencies. [It will] assess coordination and response functions under the Incident Command and Unified Command systems. [It will] assess mutual aid agreements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pua said the operation is funded through the State Homeland Security Grant Program by the Office for Domestic Preparedness under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He did not clarify the approximate amount that was granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fiscal year 2003, the Office of Domestic Preparedness provided millions that was broken down into four categories\u2014planning, training, exercise, and equipment. We still have funds, and it will be used for the operation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pua said the exercise would be conducted annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goals of Operation Safe Harbor are to validate the CNMI Emergency Operations Plan, Terrorism Response Annex, and Hazardous Material procedures. The evaluators also looked at the community and local entities\u2019 roles, responsibilities, and plans and procedures in response to an act of WMD\/terrorism,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A prank call marred the synchronized anti-terror exercise at the Saipan Harbor yesterday morning, with law enforcers rushing to a reported chemical spill on Middle Road, which turned out to be a hoax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}