by seemslikeadream » Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:36 pm
I'm checking on the subway shut down, I know people in Chi so I'm waiting to hear back but did find this in the mean time<br><br><br>Bomb threat briefly shuts down Brown Line <br><br>July 11, 2005<br><br>BY MAUREEN O'DONNELL <br><br>The Brown Line L was shut down Sunday morning after a caller phoned in a fake bomb threat to the CTA, police said.<br><br>Someone told 911 "the Kimball terminal station will explode in 12 minutes," said Officer Carlos Herrera of Chicago Police News Affairs.<br><br>The call came in at 8:37 a.m. Sunday.<br><br>The Kimball Avenue station was evacuated, and the Chicago Transit Authority shut down service until 9:55 a.m., said Anne McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the transit agency.<br><br>A search of the station failed to turn up any explosive device.<br><br>A shuttle bus took riders from Kimball Avenue to the Western Avenue station, McCarthy said.<br><br>Hoax better 'than the alternative'<br><br><br><br>The 911 Center "notified us immediately, per the protocols," CTA president Frank Kruesi told WBBM-Channel 2, where he had an appearance after the incident.<br><br>"We stopped the trains and worked very closely with the Police Department and determined that there was no threat, and then re-started service."<br><br>As for the hoax, Kruesi said: "I'd rather have that happen than the alternative."<br><br>It was the second disruption of a CTA rail line since terrorist bombs devastated London's "Tube" subway system Thursday. <br><br>Parts of the CTA's Red Line were closed Friday after a commuter reported an unattended suitcase on the Berwyn platform.<br><br>The suitcase turned out to contain only clothing. <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-scare11.html">www.suntimes.com/output/n...are11.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>State ratchets up terror response<br>BY IRV LEAVITT <br>STAFF WRITER <br><br>Illinois' capability of responding to a terror attack on the order of the July 7 London subway bombings has come a long way in recent years, two area emergency leaders said last week. <br><br>But if bombs had exploded in Chicago's subways, rescue efforts here might have been as tough as they were in London's Tube. <br><br>"We have an all-risk, all-situation plan and capability for technical rescue," said Jay Reardon, coordinator of the state's fire and paramedic terror and disaster response. "The whole system is designed for flexibility and adaptability no matter the situation we're thrown into. <br><br>"We know, though, that in some situations, we'll be dealt no-win cards. And with an explosion in a confined space, there are no guarantees what the result will be." <br><br>Reardon and Gary Stryker, president of the 2-year-old Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, both hold seats on the Illinois Terrorism Task Force. Both say that preparedness is a lot better now than it was before airplane hijackers put the nation at war with terrorists almost four years ago. <br><br>Stryker said that he's helped expand a cooperative response system for 760 police departments' officers. Fewer than 600 departments participated when he took over about a year ago. And nearly all the departments declining to participate -- about 290 -- are small "one- or two-officer" departments, he said. <br><br>Reardon, head of the statewide Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, an umbrella organization of 31 regional fire units, has helped expand participation from 550 departments in mid-2001 to more than 900 today. And most of the rest of the state's 1,200 fire departments are on board for coordinated response, too, Reardon said. <br><br>"Everybody's ramped up since 9/11," Stryker said. "Illinois is one of the top three states in the U.S. in preparedness" along with New York and Florida, he claimed. <br><br>To some, Illinois might be No. 1, In October, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government picked Illinois' efforts as tops in the country. It praised the state's efforts to coordinate its response to terror and bioterrorism, its search-and-rescue teams and its communications. <br><br>Both the state's law enforcement alarm system and its fire alarm system are set up to provide tiered and immediate responses to disasters or attacks. <br><br>Stryker's organization's plan is designed to send five cars carrying four officers each to a scene within minutes. <br><br>The system makes it easy to get progressively more officers into one or more trouble spots, he added. Also ready to go are special response teams trained to deal with weapons of mass destruction, preserve order or seek suspects while outfitted in anti-radiation or biological warfare suits. <br><br>Special response teams "have protective suits and breathing respirators, similar to that of (firefighters') hazardous response teams, only for a police-type incident," Stryker said. <br><br>The Chicago metropolitan area has eight such teams made of 30 or more officers each. Three are based in the city of Chicago <br><br>Recent progress also means that now a police officer who suspects he may have run across a terrorist can readily research that suspicion, Stryker said. <br><br>The Statewide Terrorist Information Center can give an officer on the street information on suspected terrorists from state, local and international sources, Stryker said: "Some of the other states are just starting them," while Illinois' center has been operating about three years. <br><br>On orders from former Gov. George Ryan, Reardon began refining state fire departments' coordinated response to disaster months before Sept. 11, 2001. <br><br>Reardon would coordinate statewide fire department response in the case of an attack on Illinois. <br><br>He was vacationing when the London attacks occurred, but his cell phone rang at 6:20 the morning. <br><br>"We went to orange for the transportation system and had all that in place before Chertoff went to orange," he said, referring to U.S. Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff's decision to similarly upgrade the U.S. terror alert status. <br><br>Illinois' orange alert signaled police departments statewide to send personnel to protect transportation hubs. <br><br>Stryker said for more than a year, the state Terrorism Task Force has met with Metra, Pace, Amtrak and CTA leaders about twice a month to update response and evacuation plans for transportation facilities. <br><br>"It's critical to prevent (an attack) rather than respond to it," Reardon said. "We've been known as the first responders, but we all must be first preventers, and that includes regular citizens reporting something that doesn't make sense." <br><br>He predicted if terrorists were to strike here, nearby fire and paramedic personnel would respond in minutes, and within hours, help could be arriving from surrounding states. <br><br>Southern Wisconsin has for years stood ready to help out northern Illinois, Reardon said. Recent efforts have also linked Illinois with small segments of Indiana and Missouri, and in the near future, Reardon said, he expects whole states to be ready to send firefighters, paramedics and search and rescue teams to respond to an emergency. <br><br>Reardon said that the Illinois Terrorism Task Force has funneled about $35 million in federal funds to the state's fire departments in the last three years. The money has paid for mobile command posts, portable hazardous materials decontamination units, other equipment and training. <br><br>Stryker's law enforcement cooperative has spent millions of dollars in federal funding, including almost $7 million in the last two years to buy $75,000 respirators for emergency workers, from police officers to public works employees. <br><br>Stryker said one of the next steps for the state's policing efforts is to train several 50-officer teams to respond in case of a nuclear or biological attack anywhere in Illinois. These teams would be trained to pass out antidotes and control crowds, he said.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/rg/07-20-05-635030.html">www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-...35030.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
