Medicines stockpiled in UK for post-9/11 dirty bomb, archives reveal

Medicines to combat anthrax, smallpox and botulism were stockpiled by the UK after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities amid fears of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack, newly released documents show.

The Department of Health was given £15 million to help treat victims of everything from nuclear radiation to the nerve agent sarin, as ministers scrambled to respond to the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

Protective clothing, decontamination units, needles, syringes and other equipment would all need to be ordered in case of an attack on the civilian population, officials said.

Details of the response to the worst terrorist attack in history are contained in official papers released by the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.

Clive Gowdy, permanent secretary of the Department of Health in Stormont, discussed the need for stockpiling in correspondence with Gerry Loughran, then head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, in which the wider UK response was also referred to.

Mr Gowdy wrote: “From our contacts with the Department of Health in London, the main risks identified here are anthrax, smallpox, botulism, and nerve gases such as sarin.

“As before, the hospitals, ambulance service and fire service would be heavily involved and there would be a need for protective clothing and antibiotics and antidotes to whatever agents were used.

“There would also be issues around the nature of the transmission procedures used for the agents in question. For example, a chemical or biological weapon released into the air in a crowded area would create different circumstances from a weapon of this type released into the water supply or released by airborne transmission over a wide area.”

Mr Gowdy said there was a need to stockpile “supplies of antibiotics and antidotes, needles and syringes and protective clothing etc”.

He added: “We will also need to ensure that we have sufficient decontamination capacity and that staff are properly trained to deal with the possible weapons and outcomes they might face.”

Mr Gowdy estimated that Northern Ireland would need to spend £750,000 stockpiling supplies, based on the fact that the Department of Health in London had been given an extra £15 million for the stockpiling of supplies.

Mr Gowdy wrote to Mr Loughran on Sept 26, 2001, a fortnight after the attacks in the US.

He said local firefighters had been particularly affected and felt a sense of “solidarity and bereavement” with counterparts in New York.

Mr Gowdy said senior fire chiefs had been assessing whether there were any lessons for firefighting and rescue efforts if a similar attack happened in Northern Ireland.

“They are already familiar with all major buildings in the province and have a good understanding of the structural characteristics etc so their level of preparedness is good,” he said.

He listed the possible scenarios that could come from reprisal attacks if Britain went to war to dig out the roots of the 9/11 attacks, as it later went on to do by invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said that a conventional bombing, gun attack or suicide mission using aircraft or vehicles would stretch the capacity of hospitals and the blood transfusion service, while a nuclear attack either on the province itself or on England or Scotland would cause casualties from the effects of radiation.