If it serves as any comfort, emergency officials in Greater Cincinnati have already thought about how to respond if a terrorist were to release nerve gas over Tall Stacks or expose an arena full of basketball fans to smallpox.

        And experts say Cincinnati has more resources available to respond to a chemical or biological attack than many other cities.

        “We're looking at all our emergency procedures,” said Eugene Langschwager, a member of the Greater Cincinnati HazMat Unit and an environmental engineer with the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. ""Not everything we need is there, but we're a lot further along today than we were three years ago or five years ago.”

        Anti-terrorism training picked up steam in 1995 after Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb to attack a federal building in Oklahoma City and a cult released nerve gas in a subway in Japan.

        But the sheer scale of the terrorist attacks in New York and Arlington, Va., on Sept. 11 have turned once-unthinkable scenarios into distinct possibilities, prompting widespread review of disaster preparedness plans at federal, state and local levels.

        Suddenly, lessons learned in theoretical training exercises have taken on new urgency. This week, federal authorities grounded crop-dusting planes after reports that terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks may have considered using them. Security has been stepped up at airports, power plants and municipal water supplies and at countless public gatherings.

        “The government has been thinking about this long before what recently happened,” said Capt. Ken Napier, a member of the 52nd WMD Civil Support Team, a recently formed National Guard unit based in Columbus.

        Unlike most National Guard units, which rely on part-time personnel, this unit is full time and on duty around the clock.

        The unit is equipped and has completed hundreds of hours of training, including full-dress responses to mock attacks. Although the unit awaits a final certification to be considered fully operational, it could be deployed right now if needed, Capt. Napier said.

        Now, disaster response experts predict that elected officials will be far more willing to budget money for the training and equipment that emergency personnel say they need.

        “New York has been an eye-opener for many public officials,” said Allen Frederick, a hazardous materials instructor for the Columbus-based DLA Training Center. “One of the areas where we've had problems is getting decision-makers to release funding for this kind of training. Now, some jurisdictions have been enlightened and others are becoming enlightened.”

        Mr. Frederick spoke Tuesday in Warren County at the 25th annual Inland Spills Conference, sponsored by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Normally a technical event for the people involved in cleaning up industrial spills and tanker truck wrecks, this year's conference focused heavily on coping with the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

        Other speakers included the former police chief of Oklahoma City during the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building, the commander of the Northern Kentucky-based urban search and rescue team that spent 10 days at the World Trade Center site, and several FBI and EPA investigators.

        A wide variety of equipment was on display that would be used to respond to a chemical or biological attack, including million-dollar mobile labs that can fit in the back of a van and $8,000 hand-held devices that can sniff out signs of nerve gas and other dangers.

        The overall message: Even if a terrorist strike cannot be prevented, good response planning can save many lives and make it easier to catch the attackers.

        Among the improved signs of readiness:

        • One of two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency response teams in Ohio capable of swiftly analyzing deadly substances is based in Cincinnati.

        • One of 32 National Guard units nationwide equipped to deal with weapons of mass destruction is based in Columbus.

        • Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Akron and Toledo have been among more than 150 cities since 1999 to participate in domestic preparedness programs offered by the Department of Defense.

        • Three anthrax hoaxes that occurred in 1999 gave Cincinnati-area emergency personnel valuable experience in responding to potential terrorist attacks.

        • Tristate hospitals, which already have been involved in some preparedness training, received a checklist Tuesday from the American Hospital Association that hospitals can use to re-evaluate disaster readiness plans.

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