Photo By John Hughel | Oregon Army National Guard Sgt. Aaron Stiner, assigned to the 102nd CERFP,...... read more read more
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The Oregon National Guard's 102nd Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) Defense Enhanced Response Force Package (CERFP) partnered with two regional medical centers during a four-day span of training, bringing their expertise and capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of a multi-agency response to a mass casualty event.
On Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, four members of the unit with expertise in chemical and biohazard decontamination techniques, as well as Incident Command Center experience, worked with Oregon Health Sciences University, or OHSU, during a four-hour training event. By midweek, the 102nd team had five members on site for two days of training at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas, on Sept. 16-17, engaging staff across two shifts to refine decontamination procedures and actions. The overall goal in both exercises was to help identify and develop responses to real-world incidents, recognize gaps, and enhance response procedures.
“For both of these exercises, our unit was requested to take part in the training, focusing mainly on the decontamination process,” said Staff Sgt. James Saechao, assigned to the 102nd CERFP as the Command-and-Control Liaison Officer, and active as the unit’s community outreach Noncommissioned Officer. “Mostly what we're doing is observing and taking notes, but we're answering any questions that come up from members of the hospital staff in real-time.”
By the end of each of the two exercises, Saechao and other members on site will draft a full after-action report focused on improvements and procedures. This can include a full range of aspects from the communication procedures, staffing, equipment, weather, staging areas, site locations, safety, security, and traffic flow procedures for patient delivery.
“Every hospital has a different SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] and they have to figure out what works best for them,” Saechao said. “The difference between the two hospitals we are working at this week is that they have very different physical entry points and staging areas.”
At OHSU, the entry drive to the emergency room and entrance was smaller and more compact. There is a series of winding and tight roadways that lead uphill from Terwilliger Boulevard to the hospital, and currently, the emergency entrance is undergoing construction. With a more suburban location, Sunnyside Medical Center has a larger parking lot adjacent to the emergency entrance and is accessible to Interstate 205 on Portland’s east side.
“During COVID, we set up a large blue tent in the parking lot, and it changed our mindset on how to keep contamination out of the main hospital, “said Mercedes Burley, an emergency medical nurse and member of the Emergency Preparedness Committee for Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center. “Nobody on staff knew how to set up those tents, so now with this training, it helps us understand right away what we initially need to do to prepare for future events.”
After the first day of training at the Sunnyside Medical Center, Burley said that people were “excited to get their hands on the equipment,” as most of the previous training had been conducted through online modules.
“Seeing things on a screen versus having hands on the actual equipment is the biggest payback in our training this week,” she said. “It gives us a sense of scale and confidence once we are actually moving through the stations… especially the PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] stations, as the National Guard is the expert in this area.”
Service members of the 102nd are accustomed to working with a variety of procedures, protocols, and equipment on site, as their ongoing training and direct support with multiple civilian hospitals and other first responders is a continuous process. In August, the unit conducted a full-scale CERFP joint training exercise with Air and Army Oregon National Guard personnel at Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center in Warrenton. In March, members conducted a classroom presentation and demonstrated many of the decontamination processes with civilian medical staff at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, Portland, Oregon.
“Working with our civilian counterparts, there is a great deal of ‘Train the Trainer’ on best practice procedures and making the use of the equipment you have on hand,” Saechao said, referring to the assortment of training events and actions they encounter. “If COVID taught all of us one thing, it’s to keep the hospital as clean as possible. That’s why decontamination training is an important part of all of these mass casualty training events.”
At both hospital locations, the training was conducted while patients arrived with real-world medical conditions and injuries, accessing the same emergency entrances and adding to the workload and pressures of an actual mass casualty experience. The one added challenge factored into the OSHU model was standing up an Incident Command System, testing many levels of a scenario-driven exercise. These levels of multiple complex challenges heightened the expectations for participants.
“I think we're pretty close to what I expected,” Burley said, as the second day of training was winding down at Sunnyside Medical Center. “What has been one of the biggest takeaways is how we will set all of this up – the space and procedures. That’s what made this training so timely.”
| Date Taken: | 09.18.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.18.2025 18:25 |
| Story ID: | 548684 |
| Location: | PORTLAND, OREGON, US |
| Web Views: | 32 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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