''Decisions were made at the highest levels of government, but there are early indications those decisions were not disseminated in an appropriate fashion," he said. ''There seems to have been some disconnect. Rest assured, that will be scrutinized."
Likewise, officials at Union Hospital, a small 201-bed community facility nearest to the site of the simulated plague release, said staffing issues quickly cropped as waves of ''victims" showed up at four large blue outdoor triage tents set up in the emergency room parking lot.
''We will face the reality of employees who will not want to come to work and who will want to stay home with their families. We will have to deal with a shortage of beds and we will have to deal with traffic in and around the hospital," said Kathryn Coyne, the hospital's executive director.
Fatigue among hospital workers also was becoming a problem.
''The staff has been doing this for 24 hours now," Coyne said. ''We have people who hadn't eaten or gone to the bathroom all day long."
In a real emergency, the hospital would have to set up areas for large numbers of workers to eat, shower, and sleep and would have trouble storing a large number of dead bodies, Coyne said.
By day's end, more than 100 fake patients were expected at the hospital; 64 arrived by about 9 a.m. Doctors, nurses, and actors all wore white face masks, and each ''patient" was given a colored toe tag to signify the severity of their condition. Black tags were reserved for several patients who were ''dead on arrival" and 22 others were ''admitted" to the hospital and given gowns and beds.
By noon yesterday, drill participants had counted 3,076 ''deaths" from the plague in New Jersey, a figure that included fictitious ''unattended deaths," or people supposedly found dead in their homes. The toll could reach 9,000 by week's end, said Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for the state Office of Counterterrorism.
Exercise planners had victims ''traveling" as far away as Canada before falling ill, including some on a fictitious cruise ship that supposedly left Bayonne with some exposed patients on board.
The $16 million, weeklong drill began Monday with an investigation of a black sport utility vehicle suspected of releasing an aerosolized form of the deadly bacteria.
Connecticut officials focused yesterday morning on recovery and investigation from the simulated attack there. State officials discussed how to clean up the partially collapsed building without risking additional injuries or contaminating the environment with the simulated mustard gas.
The drills are being monitored by top US Homeland Security officials from a command center near Washington, as well as regional centers in New Jersey and Connecticut. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was expected to hold a news conference on the exercise today at Rutgers University in Piscataway.
