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Exercise prepares National Guard team for real-life disaster
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Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal
Nevada National Guard soldiers Spc. Santititvech Wong, left, and Sgt. Christopher Mills treat volunteer Sarah Jorgenson, 22, in a decontamination area during a disaster drill Friday at the Southern Nevada Operating Engineers training site near Nellis Air Force Base. » Buy this photo
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Nevada Army National Guard Pfc. Ezra Wong helps Spc. Victor Desantiago while he drills through a concrete slab Friday to reach a victim trapped in a rubble pile during a disaster exercise. Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal » Buy this photo
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Wearing red helmets, white chemical suits and black gas masks, members of a Nevada National Guard disaster response team combed through a rubble pile Friday to rescue victims of a mock explosion at a chlorine plant.
The responders worked feverishly to cut through concrete and rebar, breaking the quiet of a sunny, winter day with the whine of diamond-bit drills and the din of portable electric generators.
Their work focused on areas where orange V's were spray-painted inside circles marking where victims might be. In some cases, real people acted as the victims. In others, mannequins were strapped to gurneys that rescuers hoisted from 20-foot-deep cavities by ropes attached to metal tripods.
The response exercise began at 4:30 a.m. with the explosion of a chlorine production plant in Henderson, according to the scenario described by Lt. Col. Cory Schulz, commander of the 17th Special Troops Battalion.
"We want to be able to train for multiple things that occur: collapsed structures like Haiti; massive contaminated water at Katrina; people contaminated by building rubble like the World Trade Center," Schulz said, referring to disasters from an earthquake, hurricane and terrorist attack that prompted response from the nation's Guard soldiers in the past decade.
"It allows them to sharpen their skills," Schulz said of Friday's exercise.
"These skills directly support the other citizens of Nevada," he said. "Most people see the National Guard on the news right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brings it back home.
"Once again it goes back to being a state militia. These are just normal citizens. It's the person sitting next to you in class. It's the guy who is serving you a dinner. It's the dealer at a casino. It's a doctor, it's a lawyer, it's a policeman and fireman that are out there working, but on the weekends are training and then will respond if there's a catastrophe."
The drill was reminiscent of a real disaster that struck the Pioneer Chlor Alkali plant in the early morning hours of May 6, 1991, when 42 tons of liquid chlorine spewed from a pipe that had been clogged with rags. The release sent out a toxic green cloud that covered Henderson and east Las Vegas. Thousands of residents were evacuated, and more than 300 people were treated at area hospitals for problems linked to inhaling excessive levels of chlorine gas.
Capt. Derek Imig, administrative officer at the Las Vegas Readiness Center, said decontamination "is really the meat and potatoes of what we do."
Schulz offered a real-time perspective that highlights the team's importance.
"Think about the videos of people running away from the World Trade Center just covered in that dust and jet fuel. What if, at that point in time, we would have decontaminated them? They wouldn't have had to inhale it. They wouldn't have taken it home. And, they wouldn't have walked around for hours with it on them," he said.
"We could have decontaminated them at the rate of 200 per hour."
The rubble pile was designed to resemble one that the responders might encounter from an explosion or earthquake.
The team from 17th Special Troops Battalion is one of 17 nationwide that supports the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The teams go by an acronym, CERFP, pronounced "Surf Pea," which stands for Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear Enhanced Response Force Package.
The Nevada Guard team has received $2 million in federal funding for specialized equipment and about $1.5 million to train the soldiers and airmen who will respond to disasters in the region that includes Nevada, Arizona, California and Hawaii.
The efforts Friday of responders training at the Southern Nevada Operating Engineers training site near Nellis Air Force Base will lead to certification in April of the 170 Guard soldiers and airmen.
After the soldiers and airmen completed the exercise, they removed their chemical suits and bright orange boots, which are weighed to determine how much body weight they each lost from sweating inside their suits.
Anyone who lost 3 percent of their body weight must miss the next work cycle. Anyone whose body weight dropped 5 percent would be sent to a hospital for observation.
Schulz said the opportunity to train under actual conditions is important.
"Having the ability to respond to a catastrophic event somewhere is huge," he said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
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