INTERVIEW
approximately 40 people strong, about half from the Lab and half from the military. For our C-team, there has been some significant reorganization in the last year. The team consists of 19 people, 14 professionals from the Laboratory and 5 from the military. It can deploy within one hour. At the Canton and major city level, the fire brigades and civil protection teams are quite capable of traditional HAZMAT incident management, where many of the skills are also applicable to a CBRN incident, so our focus is on bringing valuable CBRN-specific detection and expertise to them. In addition, we operate a reach-back scheme so that first responders can get expert support via phone shortly aſter arriving at the scene of the incident. The idea is to help in the early decision making following a release, which can be critical. Once our team arrives onsite – which will depend on how far they will have to travel – it will take over the expert support role. Our onsite team is equipped for field detection and sample collection. Samples will generally be analysed at our laboratory at Spiez. Due to the close proximities in Switzerland this is faster than setting up an analysis capability at the scene of the incident.
DK: But Spiez Laboratory only has 94 staff, according to your website. Obviously, deploying your field teams in an emergency situation will reduce the capability of the laboratory. As we all know from the experience of the anthrax investigation in the US in 2001, an incident can result in tens of thousands of samples, all of which will need analysis. Does deploying your laboratory’s personnel at the same time at which the lab could be overrun by samples represent a possible problem?
MC: Of course there is the potential for a temporary drop in capacity in the Laboratory if we send some of our experts out on deployment. But we have worked out some arrangements to handle such a crisis situation. As you know, we have a symbiotic relationship with the Swiss military being based also in the ABC- Zentrum. In an emergency we can ask for support of Swiss military personnel to augment the Laboratory. These military personnel are NBC specialists and are trained by Spiez Laboratory on all the tasks that they need to do in the event of such a mobilisation. Indeed, we can have over a hundred additional staff within a day or perhaps two. Additionally
22 CBNW 2013/01
for biological samples, there is analysis capability at five other BSL-3 laboratories in Switzerland. So, you can say that we have both internal and external measures in place to increase our capacity.
DK: Sitting here in Spiez, you are really at the heart of CBRN response in Switzerland, both in the military and in the civil sphere. Perhaps you can comment on how you see things developing in the Swiss corner of the CBRN community?
MC: Yes, to both. There are CBRN scenarios, which we at Spiez Laboratory are responsible for developing. An initial set of scenarios is already in place, and we are already involved in the next revision, although we do not expect to need to revise them very much. This means that Spiez Laboratory is able to influence efforts across the 26 Cantons.
DK: So, what do you see the future holding for Spiez Lab and CBRN in Switzerland?
A view into Spiez Laboratory’s new biological analysis laboratory.
Photo by the author
MC: We see that the civil protection mission is now at least as important as the traditional CBRN defence mission. It seems to us that there is much more attention to both the military and civil missions now. There are now dedicated NBC defence units in the Swiss Army structure, including NBC Battalion 10. Some useful bureaucratic changes have occurred as well. The Swiss Federal Council has passed an ordinance creating a Federal staff to deal with CBRN and major disaster planning, which will be really helpful. As you know, Switzerland is a federation and there are many different government entities here, so planning and response can get very complicated. Since the primary responsibility for emergency planning is still at Canton level, the Cantons now have to use specified national planning scenarios as the basis for their preparedness efforts.
DK: Are these similar to the national planning scenarios in the US and EU? Do they incorporate CBRN scenarios?
MC: I don’t see any need to change our basic strategy. We have a basic model that works very well. We aim
to continue our support to research and development, the international disarmament and nonproliferation community, and our Swiss civil and military customers. International scientific cooperation is going to increase. Our new biological facilities will give us extra scope for international scientific cooperation, with universities and public health organizations, not just the usual NBC laboratories. Within Switzerland, civilian incident
response capability will improve, partly in response to the reference scenarios that are now incorporated into the planning process. New personal protection materiel as well as new CBRN identification and detection capability will be brought into use in the Swiss Armed forces. And finally, the NBC defence troops of the military will have a more clearly defined response mission. zy
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