Disaster team almost ready
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Come spring, Hawai'i's ability to handle bioterrorism attacks and related calamities will take a big step forward.
For more than a year, 22 full-time members of the Hawai'i Army and Air National Guard have received 1,500 hours of specialized training on average to deal with chemical, biological and radiological threats.
At their disposal is a mobile unified command suite weighing 9 tons and worth more than $1 million, capable of connecting via defense satellite with experts at facilities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also have a portable mass spectrometer that can analyze as many as 75,000 chemicals and compounds, usually in 15 to 30 minutes.
This "is not something that a lot of people have," said Lt. Col. Ed Toy, who commands the Hawai'i unit.
The pieces are expected to come together in April or May, with Defense Department certification of the 93rd Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team.
Organization of the $2 millioni plus response team, one of 32 across the nation authorized by Congress, pre-dates the events of Sept. 11. The federal government pays for the teams, but they are under the governor's control.
"There were some people that knew that the U.S. might be vulnerable to terrorist attack, and they started planning for it long before Sept. 11," said Hawaii Guard spokesman Maj. Chuck Anthony.
Ten teams were authorized in 1999, and 17 more — including the Hawai'i unit — in fiscal 2000. Five additional teams are being organized.
When fully operational, the Civil Support Team will augment federal and Honolulu police, fire and hazmat units at emergencies, though it will not be the first to respond to a crisis.
"It brings a different dimension to protecting Hawai'i," Anthony said. "(Honolulu Fire Department) will still be the first responder, but we bring certain capabilities in terms of follow-on assistance that can be provided."
The Civil Support Team has gone through about six major exercises as part of its training, including a scenario in November at Aloha Stadium involving hundreds of role-players and about a dozen different agencies reacting to a staged crisis: A janitor stumbles on something in a locker room on game day that is making people sick, a nerve agent.
Most of the exercises are smaller in scale and have been held on military bases, the most recent at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i in Kane'ohe a couple of weeks ago.
"Each day they'll do different scenarios," Anthony said. "Our people have to go into the hot zone, collect a sample, check the victims, make an evaluation and make a projection in terms of how far and wide this particular agent may have spread."
On the team are medical technicians and experts in chemical agents, communications and logistics. All are trained to enter a contaminated area, in protective suits with breathing apparatus if necessary.
Certification is expected no later than May. After a weeklong evaluation of the Civil Support Team at Kalaeloa in late January, Army evaluators from a unit of the 5th Army out of Texas concluded: "the 93rd CST demonstrated one of the highest levels of performance during the external evaluation than any other team in the country."
Toy, commander of the Hawai'i unit, said cooperation among emergency service providers and the ability to train together at length made for an effective range of responses.
The team brings impressive capabilities to weapons of mass destruction, such as analyzing nerve agents with its portable mass spectrometer. But shortcomings exist on the biological side, such as with anthrax, said Toy. "We do basic (biological) analysis. We can't do DNA or genetic issues."
That's left to agencies such as the city and county Emergency Services Department, which has a $65,000 mobile biological agent analyzer in a converted Handi-Van it calls RAPID, or Ruggedized Advanced Pathogen Identification Device, which went into service in November. The Navy has a similar device.
Robin McCulloch, chief of Emergency Medical Services for the city and county, said field testing a substance such as anthrax can take 15 minutes, the RAPID can make a determination in about 90 minutes, and the state lab in Pearl City can provide an answer in 48 to 72 hours.
The Emergency Services Department can test proactively, as it did at the Pro Bowl and Janet Jackson concert, or reactively to packages that might contain a suspect powder, McCulloch said.
After the East Coast anthrax cases last year, hazmat units here were responding to 25 to 30 calls a day, McCulloch said. That has since dwindled to almost nothing.
Toy said the Civil Support Teams might be outfitted with RAPID devices eventually. In the meantime, the unit will be capable, once certified, of applying its expertise to the more serious threats that arise.
"It's kind of like a Jaguar race car sitting in your driveway — it's not something you want to use to go to the grocery store on a daily basis," he observed. "But if you are asked to join the race one day, you are not going to want to leave that car behind."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
