At least a dozen agencies responded to the report of a bomb underneath bleachers at a crowded football stadium during a game. In the scenario, campus police phoned in the report and 911 operators also received several calls that an explosion was heard and some gunshots were fired. Based on that information, the fire department responded, and two firefighters who were first on the scene died from exposure to a chemical or gas that was part of the terror attack. First responders die; it's part of the reality of massive explosions and attacks, said Don Needham, director of planning for the N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety. And it's usually a firefighter or a police officer, he said. "Two firemen went down. You would expect to take some casualties," he said. "It's either going to be a blue canary or a brown canary. We see it as part of dealing with terror and chemicals. [Other firefighters] were able to wear suits and get in and put the word out. Because of those deaths, that stopped EMS from moving in too quickly. You don't want to kill all the EMS workers before they can help."

Durham County used a state grant of about $10,000 to stage the exercise, he said. The creation of a central command structure on the scene and the smoother multi-agency response means the county is ready to respond to an attack, or an industrial explosion like the one that occurred recently in Kinston, Needham said. Readiness for industrial accidents or mass casualty events is a side benefit of preparing for a terror attack, he said. Some of the students who were among the dead didn't feel like the exercise was especially successful. Marya Mitchell, a 17-year-old Southern Durham High School student in the medical program, died because responders did not get to her thigh injury in time, she said.

"It was real; it seemed real. But they had us waiting for so long in the wet grass it got kind of boring," she said. "I died because they took so long getting here." The county plans to hold a similar exercise once each year.