Training takes unexpected turn while Guard works with civilian agencies

Pulaski County Daily News ^ | 10/16/2009 | Matthew J. Wilson/Missouri National Guard Public Affairs

[darrellmaurina]

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Oct. 16, 2009) — While training with civilian agencies in Columbia to clean up a mock terrorist lab producing chlorine gas, the Missouri National Guard’s 7th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team had to handle serious injuries sustained by one of its members. The injuries were only simulated but weren’t expected by those participating in the training of the Fort Leonard Wood unit with Columbia-area civilian firefighters, police, members of HAZMAT and SWAT teams, and FBI and bomb squad members. “There were a couple of hiccups, but that’s to be expected when you get that many different agencies involved,” said Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Uptegrove, the 7th’s decontamination section noncommissioned officer in charge who helped coordinate the exercise. “We’re normally dealing with the technical, HAZMAT-kind-of stuff and we wanted to try something a little different on these guys — a scenario that they don’t train on every day, but one that is very important. We have to be able to sustain the ability to extract one of our own team members should something go wrong.” Staff Sgt. Robyn Boatright, one of the unit’s reconnaissance team chiefs, played the part of the injured person after she fell down a flight of steps in the scenario while making entry in her HAZMAT suit with a member of the civilian authorities to investigate a potentially hazardous agent. At the bottom of the steps, Boatright found herself with a compound fracture in her right forearm that was bleeding profusely. She also was unable to feel her legs.