Mountain tunnel prepares responders to save lives.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: United states Center for National Response

The scene: A woman and a man lie on the floor of a poorly lit subway station, victims of a terrorist bomb. Think London or Madrid. Slowly, from a hole in the ceiling above, two rescuers are lowered by rope to render first aid and to lift them to safety.

The event is just a training exercise at West Virginia's Center for National Response, located in the mountains just outside of Charleston, the state's capital. The casualties are locally hired role-players, and the rescuers are members of the U.S. Army's Wolf Pack Platoon, part of the Military District of Washington's Engineer Company at Fort Belvoir, Va.

"We're here for a week of training," said the platoon leader, 1st Lt. Von Gretchen Beard. "I have a lot of new soldiers, and they have learned a lot."

The center is the showpiece of the West Virginia National Guard's emerging network of military and homeland-security training facilities. Azimuth Inc., of Morgantown, W. Va., has operated it since June under a five-year contract worth up to $20 million. The center does not charge other agencies for use of its facilities, said a Guard spokesman, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Michael K. Pitzer. "All they have to do is show up," he said.

Another training site is Camp Dawson, located near Morgantown in the northern part of the state. With more than 4,000 acres, it accommodates military units of any size, from platoons to brigades, from all services, active-duty as well as National Guard and Reserves.

Dawson offers several bivouac sites, a 40-foot rappelling tower, helicopter landing zones, small-arms ranges, an enemy prisoner-of-war compound, a mock third-world village and other vacant buildings that are used by military police, engineers, special operations forces and FBI hostage-rescue teams.

It also features an abandoned manganese factory-with a full set of vats and other industrial equipment-which is used for decontamination training, Pitzer said.

Bridgeport, W. Va., just off Interstate Highway 79 near Clarksburg, is home to the Fixed Wing Army National Guard Aviation Training Site. It provides flight lessons, using both in-air flying time and simulators, to aircrews of the C-12 Huron, C-23 Sherpa and C-26 Metroliner transports flown by the Army Guard.

In southern West Virginia, the Guard is assembling a vast, 46,000-acre range for live-fire, urban-combat training, complete with its own airport and control tower, said the state's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Allen E. Tackett. The range is...