Topeka ? More than 700 health and safety officials began Kansas’ largest terrorism training exercise Wednesday, testing the state’s ability to respond to a bioterrorism attack.

Representing 103 of 105 counties and 99.9 percent of the population, the event Exercise Prairie Plague is the third of its kind and the state’s first since the attacks of Sept. 11. Attending the two-day event were public health, police, fire, emergency management, various state agencies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Wednesday, participants received an overview of the exercise and heard presentations. Today they are scheduled to deal with a simulated bioterrorist attack, with smallpox as the weapon.

Stephen Joseph, a health care consultant and former New York City health commissioner, said bioterrorism would be unlike any other disaster most participants have experienced.

“This is a new ball game,” Joseph, one of the event’s presenters.

Maj. Gen. Greg Gardner, the state’s adjutant general and homeland security coordinator, said the event was also the most ambitious ever undertaken by Kansas. Previous exercises in 2000 and 2001 tested the response at the state level to tularemia, an insect-borne bacterial disease, and the plague.

Gardner said participants were seated by regions of the state to encourage neighboring counties to develop networks, exchange ideas and learn each other’s capabilities.

“In real estate, they say location, location, location,” Gardner said. “In emergency preparedness, it’s relationships, relationships, relationships.”

Because of the state’s propensity for tornadoes and other natural disasters, Gardner said, emergency managers do have some level of preparedness and networking with immediate neighbors. However, a bioterrorism attack likely would be a large-scale event crossing multiple counties and jurisdictions.

“The terrorists don’t plan to make this easy for us, and they are likely to give us many more challenges than this exercise will,” Gardner said.