By Stanley Ziemba
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 15, 2003

Responding to heightened concerns about biological or chemical terrorist attacks, Dolton officials on Friday herded hundreds of pupils into a school gym, sealed nearby doors with duct tape and plastic sheeting, and shut off the ventilation system in an exercise designed to prepare for the worst.

Although fire, tornado and bus evacuation drills are fairly routine in schools across the nation, Dolton-Riverdale School District 148 officials said they believe their anti-terrorism exercise conducted with the village's Fire and Police Departments was the first in the region and necessary in these tense times.

"We spend a lot of time over the course of the school year conducting fire and tornado drills, but never have we had the need for a terrorist attack drill until now," said Lincoln School Principal Jayne Purcell. "It's really not all that different from a fire drill, but in light of what's happening in the world we just felt we needed to do it to be prepared."

Dolton Mayor William Shaw, who helped organize the drill, took exception to recent reports that sealing doors and windows of buildings with plastic and duct tape does little to keep deadly biological or chemical agents from entering a building.

As Lincoln School's emergency bell sounded shortly after 1 p.m., some 830 pupils and their teachers trooped orderly into the gymnasium of the school at 144th Street and Lincoln Avenue. There, several fire, police and Water Department personnel instructed them on what steps would be taken in the event of a real chemical or biological terrorist attack in the area.

School workers shut down the ventilation system feeding air into the gym and covered the gym door with plastic sheeting and duct tape.