Terrorism Could Hurl D.C. Area Into Turmoil

For 45 minutes, hundreds of thousands of pedestrians and motorists were directed to seven evacuation roads, or E-routes. The limited test found problems: Traffic signals did not switch to evacuation timing, some Transportation Department radios weren't charged, some officials weren't clear on their responsibilities and didn't communicate well with each other and people in the crowd were confused about where to go.

Still, terrorism experts applauded the District for being the first major U.S. city to conduct such an exercise and said they learned from the problems.

"There were some glitches," Tangherlini said. "But if we hadn't tested, we wouldn't have known. We made a lot of progress."

Tangherlini said he is concerned about the 37 percent of D.C. households without a car. The Transportation Department is working on a "walk-out" plan with staging areas for people to get assistance. But in the case of a terrorist attack, officials are concerned about publicizing the neighborhood meeting places for fear they could be secondary targets.

Tangherlini and other transportation officials worry, however, that too much time is spent planning for evacuation when the best response to some attacks -- such as a dirty bomb or a chemical release -- might be for residents to "shelter in place," or stay put.

That would keep the roads free for the emergency responders rushing to disaster scenes and citizens away from potentially harmful pathogens, officials said. The Washington area is so perpetually prone to traffic tie-ups that a well-publicized event on the Mall can trigger monumental jams. So can a Redskins game, or an overturned tractor-trailer.

Even a disgruntled tobacco farmer, armed with nothing more than a tractor he drove into a pond on the Mall and idle bomb threats, was able to snarl downtown traffic for four consecutive rush hours two years ago.

So an emergency evacuation of the entire city -- or even part of it -- could quickly tie the region into maddening and even dangerous knots, emergency officials said.

But some local leaders are worried that the notion of staying put goes so strongly against human nature that in an emergency, people would flee no matter what they were told -- especially after seeing how long it took to get help to the disadvantaged in New Orleans.

"I think people will look at Katrina and think of 9/11 and think what you're supposed to do in an event of an attack is to run," Norton said. "And I think it's a failure that that's what people think. The best thing to do most of the time is to stay in place."

Failure to Communicate

Alert DC, the city's emergency notification system, is the high-tech answer to the Department of Homeland Security's concern that the government has no efficient way to communicate with residents if power outages leave them without access to television and radio.

The system is programmed to call all 1.5 million land-line telephone numbers registered in the District with a recorded message. But that won't help people without a phone. The system also can send 18,000 text messages a minute to cell phones, computers, pagers and other electronic devices.