Town bought for terror drills

2004-09-26 22:02

New York - The US department of homeland security is buying a tiny town in the western state of New Mexico to turn it into a lab for terrorism response training, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

A small New Mexico engineering school will buy the town of Playas, population 50, from a mining company with $5m provided by Washington, the report said.

The town, located in empty desert plains just north of the Mexico border, was built by a mining company in the 1970s and had a peak population of 1 000 before the copper smelter was shut down.

Although now deserted, it "has all the characteristics of a contemporary American community: the churches, the bank, the health clinic, even the baseball diamonds," said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico institute of mining and technology.

The school has trained 90 000 emergency workers since the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, and is currently receiving $20n in grants from the Homeland Security Department for anti-terrorism programmes, the report said.

Another school, Texas A and M, operates Disaster City, a facility in College Station, Texas, where high-rise buildings can be collapsed in mock-disaster scenarios for training purposes, it said.

- AFP