Various Fremont agencies put their response skills to the test as they worked through training exercises with the Nebraska National Guard this week.
On Tuesday and Thursday, the National Guard’s 72nd Civil Support Team worked with first responders on a series of hazardous materials incident scenarios at the Fremont Splash Station and Fremont Family YMCA.
“It’s been an excellent opportunity for our fire department to kind of go through the incident command structure and work through the different agencies that we’d have to call to properly initiate this level of response,” Fremont Fire Department Lt. Nick Morris said.
Along with the fire department, participating agencies included the Fremont Police Department and Dodge County Sheriff’s Office working with the 72nd CST.
“Their main objective is kind of just keeping up on their training and proficiency with their teams,” Morris said. “But it was an opportunity to integrate local agencies to kind of have an opportunity to work on what our response would be to a hazmat scenario.”
People are also reading…
Lt. Col. Scott Henrickson of the 72nd CST said the group is comprised of military members and works with incidents regarding weapons of mass destruction.
“Really, our role is a supporting role to local hazmat responders or incident commanders that need hazmat capabilities,” he said. “So we support our civilian agencies out there, such as the local fire departments, police departments or emergency managers.”
Henrickson said this week’s training was the first to be held in Fremont for a number of years.
“We were planning just prior to the floods unfortunately a couple of years ago doing a similar event, but then of course the floods came in,” he said.
When starting the exercises, first responders first got familiar with the setup and logistics before taking part in mock hazmat scenarios, which had them dealing with incidents involving improvised explosive devises (IEDs) or suspicious materials.
The fire department’s job, Morris said, is to isolate the area to prevent any health or safety issues.
“We go through the proper channels of calling out the different agencies to show up here,” he said. “And then when these guys get here, their job is to identify what those products might be.”
From there, Henrickson said members of the 72nd CST assisted with tools on-site to determine the materials involved.
“The 72nd CST’s role is really assisting that incident commander, because we have special capabilities, special monitoring equipment, folks that have that special skillset and knowledge to assist the incident commander for the incident at hand,” he said.
The exercises’ radio services were provided by the Pioneer Amateur Radio Club’s Amateur Radio Emergency Service, an arm of Dodge County Emergency Management.
Steve Narans, emergency coordinator for the Amateur Radio Emergency Service, said the organization has an incident command post that communicated with the emergency operation center in the Dodge County Courthouse.
“It’s fully powered with a generator, and it has all of the computers in there and everything for communications and recording and filling out forms,” he said. “And it’s basically used for briefings for the hazmat groups and the fire department and the police department.”
Narans said the mobile post was the result of a grant from the Fremont Area Community Foundation.
“On Thursday, we finished up putting up the proper antennae for long-distance,” he said. “We can talk locally, statewide, regionwide or worldwide right out of this setup.”
Morris said FFD received valuable training from the exercises, which he said had gone smoothly for the firefighters.
“You don’t get an opportunity to do it real-time very often,” he said. “God forbid we ever actually have a true hazmat-level response like this, but it’s nice to have actually gone through all the steps.”
Morris said the biggest takeaway from the exercises was that the hazmat incident process is not a fast-moving one.
“It’s got a lot of working parts, and it takes a lot of organization,” he said. “The biggest thing on the fire department’s side of it, it shows us our capability of using the system and expanding the different responsibilities to different people that we are capable of doing.”
Henrickson said the exercises are a joint effort, helping both the CST and the local communities that take part.
“We just really appreciate the opportunity to get out and work with our community partners, especially here in Fremont,” he said. “It’s just been a great opportunity.”
