Army takes stock of its domestic chem-bio-nuclear response capabilities.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

More than a decade after the Army reluctantly took on the responsibility for responding to domestic chemical, biological and nuclear attacks or accidents, it has built a force of more than 18,000 dedicated personnel.

In 2001, only 10 of the planned 57 National Guard WMD civil support teams were certified to respond to weapon of mass destruction attacks on the homeland, said Robert Salesses, deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland security and defense support of civil authorities.

Those National Guard units are intended to advise local authorities and have only 22 members, he said at the Association of the United States Army annual conference.

Today, there are 57 such teams in all the states and territories which can respond to a crisis within three hours. hi addition, there are 17 enhanced response force packages with more than 180 personnel who can respond within six hours and provide search and extraction, decontamination and medical response

There are 10 homeland response forces with some 566 personnel with similar capabilities, which can deploy within six to 12 hours. One of these units is assigned to each of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's regions.

In addition, U.S. Northern Command can deploy the defense CBRN response force with some 5,200 members for catastrophic incidents. It can arrive on the scene within 24 hours and has a range of capabilities including command and control, enhanced medical response and rotary wing lift and medevac.

Together these units are known as the CBRN response enterprise. "The terrorist threat that drove the establishment of the [CBRN response enterprise] nearly 10 years ago, in my opinion, is evolving and in most estimates is actually more dangerous today than it was back then," Salesses said.

Along with the terrorist threats, the Fukushima incident in Japan showed that accidents can be equally destructive, he said. Thirty-one states have nuclear power plants, totaling more than 100 reactors, he noted. About 50 million residents live within 50 miles of these ower plants.

As for chemical plants, "there are thousands of them," he said. About 500 of them he characterized as "extremely dangerous," with 100 million people living less than 30 miles from them.

"There is certainly an expectation by the citizens of this country that we will be there to support them in their time of need," he said of the military.

Jim Kish, deputy assistant administrator for response at FEMA, said it was after...