[AT YOUR SERVICE]
Guard team It's a nightmare local officials hope will never occur.
prepares for
terror attack
Maj. Ed Toy's team rigorously
trains for events he hopes will
never happen hereBy Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinTwo occupants of an apartment building are found dead. There are no visible marks of trauma on the bodies.
Other residents in the apartment complex where the bodies were found on the third floor had become mysteriously ill over the past week.
Local Civil Defense, fire, police, health and other authorities are puzzled. Were the deaths attributable to acts of foreign or domestic terrorism? They declare the building to be a "hot zone," and the task of determining what type of contaminant -- anthrax, blister agent or nerve gas -- becomes the job of a recently created squad of anti-terrorism experts.
Four unmarked vans and trucks pull up to the now-abandoned three-story building. Survey team expert Staff Sgt. Thomas Odoardi and other members of the 93rd Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team don their brown protective suits, boots, gloves, air tanks and masks and enter the building dragging a cart with detection equipment. Once inside, the team breaks open jellybean-size ampuls to collect residue samples with cotton swabs.
That task completed, the team then moves to a mobile decontamination site about 1,600 yards upwind of the "hot zone" where every soldier and piece of equipment is sprayed and scrubbed with soap and water. Once the decontamination process is completed, the samples are taken to a $400,000 mobile lab equipped to identify 85,000 different chemicals. To deal with biological agents, the lab has a Biosafety Level 4 glove box, a glass-enclosed area built to contain bacteria such as anthrax. It also can access the resources of the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and other agencies.
You won't find any soft-drink machines in the Diamond Head Crater building housing the newest National Guard unit.
One of the first things Hawaii Army National Guard Maj. Ed Toy did when he assumed command of the 93rd Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team was not only take out all of the soft-drink vending machines -- usually a staple in Army installations -- but also remove another military standby: coffee.
It wasn't because of religious beliefs, but more to prepare his team for the worst.
"Caffeine, sugar and alcohol increase your pulse rate," said Toy, a former chemistry and Japanese teacher and wrestling coach at Kohala High School on the Big Island. "What I am trying to do is minimize physical stresses for my team."
Toy leads Hawaii's newest team of specialists who are training for an event they hope will never occur: a chemical, nuclear or biological terrorist attack. Their mission is to assess the scope and severity of a terrorist attack by sampling suspected contaminants, then advising civil authorities on how to deal with them.His 21 counterterrorism specialists run at least 20 miles a week and must spend at least one hour a week working in special decontamination suits, where the temperature can be as much as 20 degrees hotter than outside the suits.
"I lose anywhere from two to five pounds in this heat wearing that suit," said Toy. "It's like being in a bubble."
The real decontamination outfits are sealed and can be used only once. For training purposes, team members don outfits made out of material similar to the blue tarps beach-goers use to ward off the sun.
Toy said if he can get his team members thinking in terms of diet and fitness, "then they can concentrate on the technical duties they must perform while in the suits."
Ten of these groups -- called Weapons of Mass Destruction Civilian Support Teams -- came on line around the country last year. The Hawaii team was among the 17 that were formed in the second phase at a cost of $3.5 million each, but it won't be operational for at least another year.
Toy still needs to recruit a crucial element of the team, a medical doctor. But he has been able to fill the roster of the five cells -- operations, communications, medical, survey, and administrative and logistical support -- that make up the team.
"It will take about two years to get certified," he said.
There also are at least 600 to 900 hours of courses that team members must take, Toy said.
"It's equivalent to going to graduate school."
In 1996, Congress passed the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, which mandated increased domestic preparedness against terrorist attacks, especially those involving chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The following year, the Pentagon integrated the National Guard with the effort, giving states control of the teams. That offset some questions about the military performing police duties, which would violate federal law.
The genesis of Toy's team stems from the 1990s. Between 1993 and 1995 the World Trade Center in New York City was bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000; in Japan a religious sect released sarin nerve gas in a Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring 5,500; and in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal government building, killing 168 and injuring hundreds.
The first of the new National Guard teams began their training in 1998. National Guards were chosen because they are in every state and are controlled by local officials. But the effort has not been without its critics.
A General Accounting Office report questioned the need for the teams, saying they may duplicate existing capabilities. The FBI and FEMA, which take the lead roles in domestic terrorist incidents, already have hazardous-material units trained for such responses.
But defense officials have been quick to point out that the Guard teams fall under state control and can report to a scene before requests for federal help make it up the chain of command.
The major task facing Toy as he builds the unit is to develop rapport with local police, fire, health, Civil Defense and other emergency agencies. Toy noted that the National Guard team would only advise the incident commander and not control the situation. To that end, Toy and his team spent all of last week at the old Barbers Point Naval Air Station going through various terrorism scenarios with paramedics, fire, police and military ordnance specialists to acquaint them with the capabilities of the civil support team.
Fire Capt. Robert Butchart, who heads one of two Honolulu Fire Department hazardous-materials teams, said: "It's good to be broadening the number of trained personnel. These people have the expertise and equipment we don't have. We complement each other."
Most of the focus of HFD's Hazmat crews has always been on industrial agents, Butchart said, not on nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Toy acknowledged his task is still a major undertaking and that he only has 60 percent of the equipment he is supposed to have.
Once his team is fully equipped, his next challenge will be to address the needs of neighbor island law enforcement and emergency teams.
Gregg K. Kakesako can be reached by phone at 294-4075
or by e-mail at gkakesako@starbulletin.com.