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380AEW Article

Emergency management practices suspicious materials response

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Timothy Boyer
  • 380th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  "Practice makes perfect." This phrase might take you back to your youth when you couldn't hit the ball during little league, get that move in dance class or hit the right notes on the instrument you were learning. This phrase was more common in childhood, but the old saying holds true for adults too - to get better at something takes practice.

For this reason, the 380th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron emergency management flight practiced a suspicious material response Feb. 15 at a vehicle search area here.

"We have to practice these chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives responses so that we will be 100 percent ready for any real-world scenarios," said Senior Airman Matthew Bryles, 380 ECES emergency management journeyman and member of team one during the exercise.

In keeping with the wing motto of "execute today ... prepare for tomorrow," the exercise simulated a truck with a bucket of suspicious material on the passenger side, according to Staff Sgt. Randy Golleher, 380 ECES emergency management training NCO in charge, who said the response is broken down into two teams.

"The first team is responsible for performing a site assessment and figuring out what all the hazards are," he explained. "They use radiation and chemical detectors and take readings of the scene so they can provide a good summary of the site and hazards for team two."

Team two follows safe paths, established by team one, and completes a more comprehensive investigation of the materials.

"After team one gives them the site picture, team two goes in with more advanced equipment to narrow down exactly what the product is," Bryles said. "Their action depends on their findings, they could send a sample to a lab for confirmation of what it is or they could remove and decontaminate the scene."

Practice scenarios such as these are important to ensure any real-world scenarios can be dealt with safely and expeditiously if they should occur.

"If we are not proficient in what we do, it could take us longer to deal with an incident, which could impact personnel safety and people getting back to the mission," Golleher said. "Everything we do is about mission continuation."