Photo By Brandon Honig | Members of the California National Guard's Los Alamitos-based 9th Civil Support Team...... read more read more
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The threat of terrorism has become a grisly fact of life, with people falling victim to its atrocities somewhere every day. The bullets, bombs and blood are shocking, but California Army National Guard 2nd Lt. Chris Quinones knows nearly invisible agents can be even more deadly.
“The next major terrorist attack, I feel, is very likely to be something along the [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] realm, and I want to be at the front of the force defending against it,” said Quinones, a survey team leader for the Los Alamitos-based 9th Civil Support Team (WMD). “I wouldn’t want anyone other than myself to go [into an incident site]. I don’t want someone else doing something I could have done, maybe even better.”
The 13-year soldier is not being arrogant, nor does he have a death wish, though anyone who volunteers to run toward a weapon-of-mass-destruction (WMD) event may have their sanity called into question. A five-year veteran of the 9th CST, Quinones simply believes his 22-person unit is better-prepared than anyone else in Southern California to respond to a major hazardous materials incident.
“Being that the Los Angeles Police Department is the third-largest police department in the United States, we never think that we will call on others for help, but … a WMD event would be a burden on any agency,” said Officer Michael Cassetta of the LAPD’s Major Incident Response Team, who stressed that interagency teamwork would be key in the event of a WMD attack. “When that call [for help] is made, we need to have an understanding of who is going to come, when they will get here, what will they be bringing and what we will need to sustain them.”
Practice Makes Perfect
On Aug. 17, it was the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that made the call for help. While in the process of apprehending a notional suspect who traded gunfire with them during exercise United Harbors, deputies had discovered suspicious substances in the man’s quarters aboard a yacht where he worked in Marina del Rey.
A six-person initial response team (IRT) from the CST, which is on call 24 hours a day, immediately headed to Marina del Rey, where they conferred with Sheriff’s deputies and FBI representatives before donning full protective gear and boarding the yacht.
In the suspect’s quarters, the IRT found powders, liquids and a plant being grown under an artificial light, which the CST tested and determined to be, respectively, the poison ricin; the bacterium Francisella tularensis, which causes the disease tularemia; and a castor bean plant, which is used to make ricin. The troops also gathered intelligence on the suspect’s plot, taking photos of maps and images that indicated an attack on the L.A. Coliseum was imminent.
Upon leaving the boat, the IRT went through a decontamination process with assistance from the L.A. County Fire Department, then joined a conference call to share their intel with FBI representatives around the country. Meanwhile, other CST members sped to the Coliseum.
A Supporting Role
At the stadium, where 90,000 notional football fans were gathered, CST troops conferred with the LAPD and L.A. Fire Department to devise an entry plan. The agencies decided to combine their forces into three joint entry teams, with LAPD officers providing security while the CST and LAFD gathered samples and determined the extent of the threat.
“Everything is situational, and one size never fits all,” Cassetta said. “The variety of threats and constantly changing environments are why this type of multi-jurisdictional, multi-location training and exercising is crucial.”
The troops found F. tularensis had been sprayed on ice cubes used to fill drink cups at a concession stand, and they found a misting fan at the stand was spraying mist laced with Ricin.
Quinones, who was in charge of the CST members who entered the Coliseum, stressed that when the CST is called in for an event like this, it’s not like in the movies: “The military is here; they’re going to take over.” Instead, the CST always plays a supporting role at the request of another local, state or federal agency.
“We’re never in charge at these incidents. We’re there to support and augment the agency that requested us,” said Maj. Drew Hanson, deputy commander of the CST. “But we are looked to as experts on the ground.”
Becoming an expert is difficult. To begin with, you need to learn how chemicals interact, how different instruments react to different chemicals and what the instruments are trying to tell you. And since the CST prepares for a huge range of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, there are many different substances to study.
“It’s a never-ending learning process … [that] feels like being fed information from a firehose for the first year,” Sgt. David Brian said.
It Takes More Than Knowledge
Unfortunately, when CST survey team members have amassed enough knowledge to do their jobs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready to perform. They also need to get ready physically and mentally to put on a bulky, fully encapsulated suit and go “down range” to encounter a potentially lethal contaminant.
“It’s a whole different world [in the suit],” Sgt. Taylor Coe said. “You are looking through two different lenses, both of which fog up. You’re constantly sweating, even in the middle of winter. It’s near 100 percent humidity as soon as you zip up, and the harder you work, the harder it gets.”
The CST members train hard to stay in peak physical shape, which helps them endure the heat inside the suit and even enables them to get extra time out of each bottle of air. According to Hanson, 9th CST survey team members can get 75 minutes out of a 45-minute bottle of air.
It’s not just their physical endurance, though, that enables them to stay down range for so long. Being in the protective suit is stressful and claustrophobic, and Hanson said it’s assumed that everyone loses 10 percent of their IQ when they zip up. But CST members remain unusually calm, because they continually test themselves to ensure they won’t panic when it matters most.
“One of the ways we’ve instilled this calm nerve is we take guys down to the beach and they go into the ocean in full gear,” Quinones said. “You float in this suit, but it’s heavy and it feels like you’re going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. It freaks you out, and you will panic unless you’re accustomed to knowing what it’s like to be in fight-or-flight mode.
“You must be able to focus in that situation.”
United Effort
The 9th CST works with local agencies throughout Southern California on a regular basis to familiarize themselves with each agency’s tactics, techniques and procedures. The Guard’s Hayward-based 95th CST does the same in Northern California.
United Harbors brought 19 such L.A.-area organizations together to test their response under a scenario organized by the National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) at the University of Nebraska, which is dedicated to providing solutions for combating WMDs.
“Due to its sheer size and priority placed on public safety, there is a tremendous propensity for overlapping response across Los Angeles,” said Wes Carter, NSRI’s director of field operations and training. “By integrating agencies, teaming and training together, we sped the process of hazard mitigation, which enables faster disaster recovery.”
United Harbors proved the various agencies could quickly integrate into entry teams and agree on the best course of action, Hanson said. But training exercises like this must be held on a regular basis, or that seamless working relationship will degrade.
“If something like this really does happen, we [agencies] could all be thrown into this incident together,” Hanson said. “We need to consistently train with our L.A. County and city partners, so we always have a good idea how each agency is operating and how the CST can most appropriately fit into the operation.
“We can be a tremendous asset for them. It’s why we exist.”
| Date Taken: | 09.07.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 09.07.2016 17:45 |
| Story ID: | 208991 |
| Location: | LOS ALAMITOS, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 1,523 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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