Day #2: Now where have we seen this before?

A Terrorism Emergency Services Team has been flown in from Las Vegas (Las Vegas???) to examine the area. They have cordoned off a ridiculously tiny swath of Manhattan: All of the lower level of Grand Central Terminal and all of Penn Station is off limits. The Red Zone starts at the Hudson, goes down Vesey-Ann-Fulton streets, up Pearl Street to Chambers, and back to the Hudson along Chambers. Of course, it avoids the World Financial Center and the Mercantile Exchange, but it does include a huge bunch of government buildings.

Yet they're saying that the City Hall bomb was not a radiation bomb.

Earlier this year, a team from Brookhaven National labs suggested establishing a contamination perimeter 500 meters in radius around the site of a radiological dispersion device. This perimeter is a fraction of that recommendation. Nice to know the government is still listening to the experts.

Meanwhile (to minimize the spread of whatever radioactivity there is???), the FDNY spent the night in shifts, spreading foam over the streets around what has come to be known as The Site. [And now there's a topic for some learned paper on media semiotics -- since "Ground Zero" was already taken by the location of the September 11 incident, what were they going to name this location? Especially since "Ground Zero" fit this incident better than the September 11 incident.]