Rescue Worker Boot Camp

A few dusty, rugged miles beyond this desert town born of the Nuclear Age is the antithesis of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist-training camps.

It’s here, at the federal government’s barren Nevada Test Site--the scene of 928 nuclear detonations through 1992--that emergency crews from across the nation prepare to deal with terrorism.

Police, firefighters and other “first responders” train here to confront a new specter of emergency--where chemical, biological or radiological materials may await the first men and women to roll up on the scene.

They participate in role-playing exercises based on such scenarios as a terrorist bombing a laboratory to spew radioactive material through a neighborhood.

SWAT officers, bomb squad members, hazardous-materials experts and medical personnel must contend with fireball explosions, concussion grenades and pitch-dark, smoke-filled tunnels. They face simulated biological and chemical threats and, in some cases, real radioactive materials.

“They certainly add realism to our training--something you can’t get any other way in a classroom setting,” said program graduate Jay Bayman, manager of the Ventura County sheriff’s office of emergency services.

“You’re breathing bottled air. It’s hard to see. You’re sweating. You’re decontaminating people. You’re up against the clock,” Bayman said. “It’s probably as realistic a training for terrorism as you can get in that regard.”

Therein lies one of the underlying missions of the training center with a cumbersome and ominous name: Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Response Domestic Preparedness Program.

“We want to induce stress,” said James N. Sudderth, one of the on-site managers. “Responders will face some kind of threat, and yet they must stay focused.”

Added instructor Clell West, a former Las Vegas fire chief, “The issue is whether the chaos [of a terrorism strike] manages you, or you manage the chaos.”

The Nevada Test Site, 90 miles north of Las Vegas, is one of several centers in the country addressing terrorism. Among the nation’s specialized training sites are ones operated by Texas A&M;, for hazardous materials; New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology for explosives; Louisiana State University, for biological threats, and the Department of Justice’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Georgia, for chemical warfare.

Each of those elements is integrated here, at a weeklong class where participants can experience a range of threats and use the federal government’s latest array of tools and equipment.

The program started two years ago, on a slice of test site land not contaminated by nuclear explosions, and has drilled about 1,200 participants. But with a new sense of urgency, the facility is booked through March with another 1,200 enrollees.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) two weeks ago asked President Bush to fund expansion of the facilities, creating a National Center for Combating Terrorism.

Reid noted that the Nevada Test Site is secure, is as large as Rhode Island and already is used for classified, counter-terrorism training. The site includes a complex of tunnels--a legacy of underground nuclear blast monitoring--that now is used to study how to best attack reinforced and deeply buried targets.

Officials at the test site, operated by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, won’t elaborate on what sorts of counter-terrorism training occurs here, but the hilly desert’s similarity to cave-pocked Afghanistan is obvious.

The site, Reid said, can be used for testing such anti-terrorism technologies as sensing devices to detect hazardous chemicals and biological agents, and is well suited for expanded counter-terrorism training.

Both Congressional and White House response to his proposal has been favorable, Reid said Wednesday. “This is something we can set up in days or weeks, not months or years.”

For the last 20 years, the test site has been a home for the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, specialists in thwarting terrorism involving nuclear or radiological weapons.

Though fire departments and other public safety agencies have long trained to deal with more conventional hazardous materials, their focus turned to terrorism response after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

New York Police crime scene Det. Edward Wallace said he was able to apply what he learned here when he responded Sept. 11 to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“When other agencies were checking on radiation levels [at the World Trade Center], the things I learned all came into play, including understanding what they were doing, what they were talking about,” Wallace said. “And I had been prepared for a sense of the chaos at an active [terrorism] scene.”

Scenario-based training is conducted around concrete block buildings, tunnels, industrial tanks and other structures--generic enough that the lessons and strategies learned here can be applied back home.

Up to 100 people are trained concurrently. They are sometimes awakened from their beds at 2 a.m. with the announcement, “Terrorists have taken hostages at a nuclear facility!”

They are rushed to the site and confronted--without warning--with actual explosions and theatrical smoke. Their mission: after neutralizing the suspect and rescuing hostages, to diligently work through the buildings in cumbersome, protective garb, wielding detection equipment in search of bombs, chemical spills and radiation leaks, all under miserable, unlit conditions with air tanks running dangerously low.

“We want to show them the difference between a normal incident response and a response to a [weapon of mass destruction] incident,” West said. “We want to overwhelm them with chaos.”

Instructors say they can’t create large disaster scenarios. “But we try to prepare them for the basics, and then they can extrapolate,” said James Barrett, a Department of Energy advisor.

“Their sense of accomplishment in what they learn here will give them confidence to carry out the demands in responding to a terrorism event,” Barrett said.