St. Louis firefighters train with National Guard Civil Support Team

By Bill Phelan
Ngmo.pao@US.ARMY.MIL

ST. LOUIS, MO. - A terrorist attack downtown triggers mobilization of the Missouri National Guard's 7th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team, who will work closely with St. Louis firefighters in response.

The attack at the Scottrade Center is just an exercise, but it drives home the importance of cooperation and coordination between civil first-responders and the National Guard in the event of a potential mass-casualty incident.

The 7th CST, headquartered in Jefferson City, is a 22-member joint Air and Army National Guard unit that supports civil authorities at chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-explosive incident sites. Fourteen members of the unit spent Jan. 10-15 training with St. Louis firefighters, familiarizing themselves with each agency's detection and analysis equipment and coordinating response capabilities.

"We provide some technical training for St. Louis firefighters on some of our similar detection equipment," said 1st Sgt. Timothy Uptegrove, of Lebanon. "We also discuss the difficulties of boarding vessels on the Mississippi River and we set up mock scenarios at the Scottrade Center where firefighters will actually use the equipment on which we provided the training. The whole purpose of this is to build a rapport between the Guard and the first-responders so that in the event something does happen, we're already used to working together."

"We have to have a working relationship with first-responders across the state," added Lt. Col. Ray White, of Ashland. "We have to be comfortable with their capabilities and they have to be comfortable with ours."

At the Scottrade Center firefighters in protective gear were tasked with finding, identifying and containing hazardous materials using Guard equipment.

"We want the firefighters to build confidence in the use of the different equipment and to get used to working in the haz-mat suits," said St. Louis Fire Department Capt. David Neighbors. "Since the arena could be a target of a weapon of mass destruction our firefighters have to be familiar with it and have an idea of how to operate in here."

CST members were also given a tour of the St. Louis Port facility on the Mississippi River to acquaint themselves with the potential hazards of an emergency at such a site.

"We have to be familiar with river facilities and with the barges that travel up and down the rivers," White said. "We need to expand our knowledge base and response capabilities, so we expand our networking. St. Louis is one of the largest inland ports in the country and has a lot of barge traffic. If something ever happens on the Mississippi or Missouri rivers we will be able to go out and assist the first-responders."

Neighbors described the opportunity to train with the National Guard as "invaluable."

"The National Guard and the fire department operate and live in different worlds but our threats are the same and if anything bad happens we're going to be working together," he said. "So they have some knowledge we need and we have some we can pass along to them. After all, we're all playing for the same team."

For more information about the Missouri National Guard, please call 1-800-GoGuard or visit www.moguard.com.