Dr Christopher Todd Jones, Superintendent of the Centre for Domestic Preparedness, tells Gwyn Winfield about building better partnerships
Domestic Bliss T
here are no shortages of facilities available for CBRN training in the US - at both federal, state, local and private level. Often these may well be just some form of awareness training, but none of them have the stature and muscle of the Centre for Domestic Preparedness (CDP). CDP is a mainstay of the US civilian CBRN response, and it is rare to find a first responder that has not been either in to CDP in Anniston, had CDP come to them, or been trained by a colleague through the ‘train the trainer’ project. Indeed, Dr Jones is keen to point out that CDP trains over 90,000 first responders a year through this system, a far cry from the 480 a year that they started with in 1998. What perhaps makes this more pertinent to our non-US readers is that, through their international outreach efforts, they are setting up relationships with other international military and civilian first responders. The Centre bills itself as the all- hazards centre, which to me is always a loaded term. There are very few all-hazard ‘specialists’. Usually as people move up the career and knowledge ladder they stop being all-hazards, though they may maintain and practise the concept, and start being subject matter experts. So is CDP just for the generalist, and specialists need not apply? Dr Jones suggested otherwise: “We have a range of curricula that provides for the entry level, foundational, skills in the two areas of hazmat or chemical response, as well as the mass casualty and medical surge training. As people grow in their discipline we try to bring those foundational skills through advanced courses up to the operational technician level. Their skill level shapes their entry into our curriculum, and therefore the upper end of that continuum, at the technician level, is where the more complex advanced skills are trained and that gives folks a progression of competency over the range of curricula that we offer.”
Those military with good memories will remember, in part, CDP - based as it is
on the old US Army Chemical School at Fort McClellan, and the Centre has developed that heritage, rather than just relied on it. “Our more advanced training can only be got here in Anniston,” said Dr Jones, “at our two training venues. The Chemical Ordnance Biological Radiological (Cobra) Training Facility is where we have the ability to provide responders with training in a full toxic agent environment, and where we have live nerve agent such as VX and GB. We also have the Noble Training Facility. Noble is the only hospital in the US that is dedicated 100% of the time to a training venue for healthcare professionals, where we are able to replicate a real hospital environment and conduct mass casualty, medical surge training for responders. Working hospitals are 24/7 operations, and it is very difficult to take down an ER and conduct a mass casualty or medical surge training experience – moreover, that training is not exportable!”
A recent change, that some of the responders who have been through CDP will not have experienced, is that as well as chemical and radiological, the centre now also does biological (the attenuated bacillus anthracis delta-sterne) and ricin (the low toxic A chain) training. Dr Jones
felt that this provided an edge on any other civilian training establishment in the world, though in some respects I feel it is a hard edge to justify. Many other facilities use some form of simulant: either micro-dots for decon, or E. coli for sampling. What advantage does the first responder get from using live bio-agents? Their confidence building is done via the chemical live agent training (LAT), decon can be done with microdots and the type of hostile (CWA and decon) environment that the agent will be released into will compromise sampling. Dr Jones suggested that it was all about verisimilitude. “Recently” he said, “the Graham-Talent WMD Centre released their update saying that the threat still remains [See CBRNe World Spring 2009 Ed.] and little has been done to prepare responders for that threat. We believe that by introducing a bio element into CDP, as an additional set of competencies, it will begin to address this sense of a lack of training capability for responders in a biological response. We consistently ask our students: what else are you seeing or are concerned about in order to do your job when you go back home? The feedback we receive often highlights a desire for training in biological response. So the combination of
CDP trains 90,000 people a year ©CDP
www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe South America 2012, 13-14 March, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. More information on
www.icbrnevents.com
February 2012 CBRNe WORLD
21
CBRNeWORLD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76