Exercises are getting real

Jace Radke

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

What has mainly been a tabletop exercise became a little more real Wednesday as helicopters and National Guardsmen in chemical-resistant blue suits descended on Logandale during the busiest day of a two-week terrorism drill.

Operation Determined Progress, a national exercise designed to gauge and improve the cooperation between the military and local, state and federal responders, made a big splash in the small desert town 58 miles north of Las Vegas.

"We don't usually get something of this magnitude out here," said Logandale resident Teresa Scacco, who watched three CH-47D, twin-rotor Chinook helicopters land at the Clark County Fairgrounds on Wednesday morning. "This is a little, predominantly Mormon town, and I'm sure we're going to be talking about this for a while.

"It'll rank right up there with the county fair."

Approximately 5,000 people who call the Moapa Valley home had their population boosted by more than 300 people Wednesday as firefighters, police and the military played out a terrorist scenario.

The fairgrounds stood in for Las Vegas, with a livestock building serving as a clandestine biochemical lab where an imaginary strain of plague was developed and released on the Strip in a simulation.

Clark County Health District workers were at the fairgrounds working to process hundreds of volunteers pretending to be infected with the plague. On the other side of the fairgrounds a specialized Arizona National Guard unit was examining the lab.

"There are a lot of good things happening out here, but the most important is that the people who are going to have to work together in an emergency situation are getting a chance to practice with each other," said Jerry Bussell, Nevada homeland security advisor. "We're not out here exchanging business cards.

"We're working on the communication we're going to need in a real life situation."

The day began with medical supplies being flown into Nellis Air Force Base and trucked to Logandale in a convoy that included more than 20 vehicles and was shadowed by a National Guard helicopter.

Later, Clark County Fire Department hazardous materials technicians worked with members of the National Guard's 91st Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team to test for plague and ricin in the mocked-up lab.

The 91st is a full-time guard unit based in Arizona, and is designed to assist local first responders dealing with terrorist-created radiological, biological or chemical agents, unit commander Lt. Col. Michael Lynch said.

"We can be called out to help when local authorities find something that is beyond a meth lab, and could be a weapon of mass destruction," Lynch said. "We have equipment that can determine what a substance is within hours of obtaining a sample."

The 91st can set up a mobile lab, a decontamination center, a command center, and satellite communications array in under two hours. Instead of waiting more than 24 hours for a state lab to identify a foreign material the unit can analyze it at the scene.

The Arizona team would respond to terrorist incidents in Nevada, which doesn't have a similarly equipped guard unit but could get one in the future, National Guard spokeswoman April Conway said.

Clark County's hazardous material crews would remain the first responders even if a specialized unit was funded in Nevada, but such a unit would bring added resources, said Richard Brenner, a county fire protection engineer.

"It will probably be a while before we see a unit like the 91st in Nevada," Brenner said. "It would have to be funded and then it comes down to politics.

"If Utah and Nevada are both in line to get one of these teams, Utah would get one first because they are stronger politically."

The 91st trained with county firefighters this week in classroom exercises, said Staff Sgt. Joseph Jakubowski III, a member of the 91st.

"What we try to do is give them a basis to compare a meth lab setup, that they may run across fairly often, to a chemical weapons set up," Jakubowski said. "The main difference is that the chemical weapons lab is going to have more commercial grade chemicals, and it will be clean and professional.

"A sloppy terrorist ends up a dead terrorist when they are dealing in chemical and biological weapons."

The exercise is scheduled to continue through next week, and is designed to test the abilities of Northern Command, the military's domestic terrorism watchdog that went into operation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

While the simulated plague outbreak is occurring in Nevada, other simulated national disasters are stretching the command's resources. A simulated hurricane is making landfall in the United States along the Gulf of Mexico and simulated terrorist attacks are scheduled on port cities and Alaska oil lines.

While the plague outbreak is only one part of the national exercise, residents of Logandale said the drill was something they would not soon forget.

"Our big action is going down to get a Sandwich at Wally' s (the town gas station) for lunch," said John Stastny, a county recreation specialist for Moapa Valley. "It's just awesome to see these big helicopters come in and land right in front of us."