De Soto National Guard unit to train as disaster response force

By Bill Phelan
ngmo.pao@us.army.mil

DE SOTO, Mo. - Normally tasked with providing showers, laundry and food service to troops in the field, the De Soto-based 735th Field Service Company of the Missouri National Guard is about to train for a new and potentially dangerous mission.

As part of the unit's annual training exercises, Soldiers of the 735th will undergo rigorous disaster response and recovery training next month under a U.S. Defense Department directive to create 10 regional Homeland Response Forces across the country. The 735th will be part of the Region 7 Force, which is headquartered at Jefferson Barracks in south St. Louis County and includes Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.

Each Homeland Response Force will consist of about 570 personnel and will be the military response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive event.

Capt. Erin M. Slawinski, of St. Charles, commander of the 735th, said 75 Soldiers of the unit will train for such disasters at the Response International Group in Oklahoma City, a private firm that specializes in disaster response training.

"The training will be physically intense," Slawinski said. "It will be basic search and extraction, lifting and hauling, shoring, breaching and breaking and ropes training."

The Response International facility includes mock disaster sites, complete with mounds of rubble, some of which came from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building destroyed in a domestic terrorist attack in April 1995.

And while RIG training generally focuses on responding to man-made disasters and acts of terrorism, Slawinski points out that natural disasters such as the earthquake in Japan, can lead to secondary disasters at nuclear plants or industrial facilities.

"Whether it's an earthquake or a tornado or a man-made disaster, we will train to respond," she said.

In addition to basic disaster response training, Soldiers of the 735th will also undergo advanced training at Camp Gruber, OK.

"During our second week of training about half our Soldiers will go through the advanced search and rescue course, which is 24-hour operations involving different missions and scenarios to practice what they learned during the basic course," Slawinski said.

The 735th Field Service Company is part of the 835th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, based in Jefferson City.

Soldiers of the 735th will depart for Oklahoma on June 3.

For more information about the Missouri National Guard, please visit www.moguard.com and our social media sites: www.facebook.com/Missouri.National.Guard; www.twitter.com/Missouri_NG; www.youtube.com/MoNationalGuard; www.myspace.com/missouri_ng; www.flickr.com/photos/missouriguard

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For more information about this release, please contact UPAR Bill Phelan at 314-416-6639 or cell, 314-556-5428 or e-mail bill.phelan@us.army.mil