A firefighter dragged an actor playing an injured person out of the station during the simulation.
In a drill reportedly planned for more than a year, but which came on the heels of the recent Paris terrorist attacks, police — packing blue plastic fake machine guns — swarmed into the J/Z Bowery subway station last Sunday in a simulated response to a terrorist incident.
The phony terrorists, including one with a mock suicide vest, were all “killed.” But 30 actors playing civilians also “died,” while six others survived, though with “serious injuries,” the Daily News reported.
Firefighters and other first responders also participated in the two exercises in the station, at Bowery and Kenmare St., which was closed for the drill.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, were on hand for the action.
“We did very well, I think, this morning,” Bratton said afterward. “There were casualties, but the idea is to get in and minimize to the greatest degree possible the casualties.”
“This was an impressive display of the capacity of this city to respond to an incident,” de Blasio said. “This is why this city is so fundamentally prepared for any situation.”
The News reported that Johnson said Homeland Security doesn’t know of any “specific credible threat of a Paris-like attack against the U.S. homeland.”
However, he added, “We are and we continue to be and we have been concerned about copycat-like attacks.”
Johnson encouraged people to go about without their normal lives and travel as the holiday season approaches.
“Terrorism cannot prevail,” he said, “if the people refuse to be terrorized.”
