Playas, N.M. – Inside an adobe house in New Mexico’s remote southwestern corner, a terrorist cell has set up shop. Outside, a 12-member SWAT team takes up positions, slaps an explosive on the door, blows it in, storms the place and opens fire, the pop-pop-pop echoing through the desert.
Within moments, the terrorists are dead. The town is saved, at least for the day.
Because tomorrow, the same SWAT team will have its hands full again, this time confronting a suicide bomber.
Playas once was a real community. But now, practically the entire town of more than 250 houses and other buildings is one big, realistic-looking training ground for U.S. law enforcement officers being schooled in anti-terrorism techniques.
In the burst of anti-terrorism spending that followed Sept. 11, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology bought the once-dying town four years ago, using a $5 million Homeland Security Department grant.
The university now owns and operates the place, offering instruction to the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the FBI, National Guard units, and state and local police departments from around the country.
Hardly anyone actually lives in Playas. It is like a movie set, with authentically furnished homes that exist solely for training purposes.
Nineteen-year-old Trent Johnson, who grew up in Playas and whose family owns a nearby ranch, has grown accustomed to helicopters overhead.
“You see soldiers walking down streets. You see tanks and Humvees,” he said. “You sometimes feel like you live on an Army base.”
Playas, about 300 miles southwest of Albuquerque, was built in the mid-1970s by a mining company to house workers and had about 1,500 residents at its peak during the ’80s. But a nearby copper smelter closed in 1999, and many people moved away.
By the time New Mexico Tech came in and bought the 259 company-owned homes and other structures – including apartment houses, a community center, grocery store, medical clinic, airstrip, bank and six-lane bowling alley – Playas was down to 60 or so people.
All were given the option to stay, and about 50 are still here.
But they were relocated to a few streets on the town’s south side. Most of them are now on the university payroll as police officers, security guards, landscapers, custodians and other maintenance workers.
The Playas training center opened nearly three years ago. One section of town has video cameras mounted on street poles and inside every room in every house. The footage is fed to a control center, where participants can analyze the action on giant screens.
Most of the homes are made to appear inhabited – a box of crackers on a refrigerator, wall hangings, playing cards on a table, toys in the yard. And there are lots of places for terrorists to hide: closets, showers and bedrooms.
“Taking on this type of effort has been a challenge. There’s so much coordination with state and federal agencies and the research side of our mission,” said Van Romero, New Mexico Tech vice president for research. “We do it because we’re convinced it really is a very good thing for the security of our nation. That’s what drives us.”
