Tools To Fight Terrorism Program Trains Emergency Crews To Respond To Potential Domestic Attacks

A Spokane firefighter learning about potential domestic terrorism nightmares probably echoed the sentiments of 450 other students.

“I’ve learned to recognize that I need to be afraid,” the firefighter whispered Tuesday as he walked into a large training room lined with equipment.

Dave Byrnes, deputy director of the city-county Department of Emergency Services, said he’s heard plenty of other “first responders” express similar worries.

Terrorists can cook up chemical or biological havoc in a shoe box and deliver it with deadly consequences.

Most cities are ill-prepared and lack modern equipment and training to respond to such incidents, Congress decided four years ago.

As a result, Spokane and 119 other U.S. cities are getting “domestic terrorism preparedness” training.

Firefighters, police, hospital workers, bomb squad experts, emergency medical crews and incident commanders are in Spokane for four days of a Domestic Preparedness Training Program.

The training includes several courses, including identifying “weapons of mass destruction,” incident command and terrorism incident response for hospitals.

After a classroom session Tuesday at the Fairchild Air Force Base Fire Department, students walked to a large vehicle garage for hands-on training with detection equipment, some of which isn’t available to emergency crews in the Spokane area.

The equipment would be used by first responders - usually firefighters - in the event of a terrorist incident. None of it is particularly new or high-tech.

Firefighters wear sticky M9 and M8 papers, for example, on their clothing to detect the presence of chemical agents. The papers have been around for years.

Chemical agent machines, which look like large video cameras, were invented 20 years ago, and were widely used by U.S. forces during the Persian Gulf War in 1990.

The Fire Department at Fairchild has one of the $4,000 devices, but the city’s Hazardous Materials Team doesn’t.

Jim Kolch, a chemical engineer trainer for the program, said an expensive gas chromatograph usually is the best way to identify chemical agents.

But it’s a delicate, calibrated piece of equipment that can’t easily be taken into the field.

So responders wearing special suits are taught to collect samples in sterile bottles and return them to hospitals or labs for identification by chromatographs and scientists.

Biological agents are collected in a similar manner.

Kolch is part of a team of 40 trainers assembled under a contract with the Department of Defense.

The training is developed by the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The Defense Department fashions the training in conjunction with the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We take the first responders - law enforcement, fire departments, hospitals and EMS crews - and teach them about domestic terrorism preparedness,” spokeswoman Ann Gallegos said.

“Most of these crews have the basics of hazardous materials, but we add the chemical and biological experience from the Army’s vast background with these materials,” Gallegos said.

The training is financed by federal money earmarked by Congress in 1996, a year after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Of the $300,000 federal grant, $20,000 is funding the training course, Byrnes said. The remaining $280,000 will be used to purchase equipment that would be used in a terrorist incident involving nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Byrnes said after the training is complete, his department and other agencies involved, including local hospitals, will meet to decide what equipment they need.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

BACKGROUND

Deadly weapons

“Weapons of mass destruction” are defined as nuclear, biological or chemical.

Chemical and biological weapons that have been used by terrorists include sarin gas, anthrax and botulinum.

Some chemical and biological weapons are not difficult to construct, experts say, so delivery methods become the primary challenge for would-be terrorists.