CHILLI COTHE, Ohio – Soldiers and Airmen of the Columbus-based 52nd Weapons of Mass Destruction, Civil Support Team (WMD CST) passed a mandatory evaluation during a training exercise in Chillicothe June 7.
The 22-member combined services team is required by federal law to be evaluated and recertified by the members of the Civil Support Readiness Directorate, 5th Army, every 18 to 24 months.
“To make things as real as possible the teams don’t know when the call is going to come in,” exercise specialist Dave Alderfer said. “They’re of course aware when they’re in their 18 to 24 month window, but the call could come at any time.”
At 9:00 a.m. sharp the call went out from the Ross County Emergency Management Agency that a suspicious trailer was found at Great Seal Park. Residents had heard some disturbing words from the occupants of the trailer such as “The Jihad must succeed” and notified Park Services. Up the chain the information went until stopping at the 52nd WMD CST.
Everything in the evaluation is timed; once the call is received, the team has 90 minutes to be on scene. Upon arrival, they have another 90 minutes to have their equipment set up and be on their way to the suspected area.
Working their way to the trailer, the team faced its first obstacle. The large chemical suits and air tanks the Soldiers carried would be difficult to get through the narrow trailer door. After successfully getting through the door, the team began their evaluation of the trailer. But something was wrong; they weren’t finding anything.
“What the team will find in the trailer is essentially a bust,” said Alderfer. “But if they conduct their examination of the area thoroughly, they will find information that will lead them to where the real issue is.”
Lt. Col. Paul McAllister is the deputy operations officer (J3) for the Ohio Army National Guard, Joint Forces Headquarters. In order for members of CSRD to provide a more realistic evaluation, coordination between the CSRD and state officials had to occur.
Enter McAllister.
“We worked with many different state agencies to bring this together,” said McAllister.
To make the scenario as real as possible, McAllister coordinated with Dave Bethel of the Ross County Emergency Management Agency, Mike Borland, Great Seal Park Officer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and Retired Col. Douglas Moorman, Director Veterans Administration with the Chillicothe Veterans Administration Hospital. All played roles in the scenario. With all the coordination, McAllister now had two plans to present to the CSRD.
“When I proposed the two different scenarios to the CSRD, they liked them both so much they decided to combine them,” McAllister said. “This will be the first time a CST Team has had to go to two different locations as part of their evaluation.”
While the team didn’t find all the clues left in the trailer by the evaluators, they found enough to determine the other location. They passed the intelligence on to the Incident Commander (see side bar), analyzed it and began preparing to move.
About five miles west of Great Seal Park is a sprawling 1,000 acre compound that is the Chillicothe Veterans Administration Hospital.
“The VA Hospital provided a perfect location,” said McAllister. “They normally rent out buildings for other commercial-type uses, so it made sense that this fake organization would rent the location and set up a bomb factory in it.”
The clock began ticking for the team as soon as the last vehicle crossed into the decontaminated “foot print.” Soliders and Airmen jumped from their vehicles and began setting up decontamination stations, medical stations, analysis labs and communications arrays, but Mother Nature would prove no ally tonight.
As the team moved systematically about placing their equipment, a slow rain picked up steam until a full down-pour slowed their progress. Eventually, lighting strikes caused the exercise to pause as the team and evaluators waited it out. About an hour later, with the storm passed, the clock started again.
By midnight, the evaluation came to an end. The team discovered a Saran gas production lab and a bomb in the building.
While the full evaluation results will take a few days, the team passed its certification and now looks onward to the next scenario.