I should have posted this here sooner but better late than never. Back in the mid 2000's, I was in paramedic school. A local paramedic came to our class and spoke about a training program that offered many different classes depending on what we were interested in. The whole thing is put on, and paid for by the Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, the Center for Domestic Preparedness. The training option I chose as Technical Emergency Response Training (TERT) You know, the government loves their acronyms. It was a 4 day course at a huge facility in Anniston, AL. It was an old army base in the mountains. It took a day to travel (again, all paid for by the government), 4 days of training, and another day to return home. We had to apply by filling out an insane amount of paperwork, send that paperwork to our local Homeland Sec official, they had to sign off on it and they sent it on to be processed. It seemed to take months if memory serves me correctly. No one from my class of about 20 bothered applying because their normal jobs wouldn't give them that much time off. Fortunately, I worked for a great employer who did give me the time off. We got our airline tickets in the mail, along with a ton of other stuff. Upon arrival at the airport, I met 2 security guys from a local hospital that I was doing clinical rotations at for my paramedic license. We all got to the airport in Atlanta, and there were like 3 or 4 buses full of people from all over the US. We then drove to the Army Base. Upon our arrival, 2 guys got on each bus. One was a guy who was professionally dressed with tags hanging around his neck, along with a guy in full fatigues and an M4. They checked everyone's IDs before we were allowed to step off the busses. As I was getting off the bus, I noticed this crazy building that looked like an oil refinery. There were different sized pipes and vents going in every direction. I thought to myself, "WTF is that place?' We were then led to a building that was more or less a building with classrooms, but this was sort of a lecture room with a huge screen. They went over what to expect over the next 4 days, gave us our IDs for the facility and our room keys. We were 2 to a room, which were basically dorms. Before dinner, we were told to report to a building and our blood was drawn. Everyone thought it was a bit odd. I don't recall this fact being spoken about in the application paperwork, but it may have been. We then had some amazing food. The next day, classes started. We had class all day and some of it was hands on type things learning how to use the equipment we would need in the final exercise. I'm from the OKC area so the bombing got brought up in one of our classes. Numerous scenarios were floated which this clown from the FBI immediately shot down. I wish I'd known then what I know now. But it's probably good I didn't. We learned how to use geiger counters, and many other devices to test everything you could imagine. Well, things one could test in the field, but not lab testing. We went over different classes of PPE and how to DON and DOFF them. We had to do mask fit tests which I didn't understand until later. The last full day we ran a full-blown exercise that took all day and involved everyone. What was the scenario you may ask? A train derailment that involved the disbursement of Phosgene gas, Chlorine, and Carbon tetrachloride. Basically, freon 10, which was banned in roughly 2000. But in this scenario, it was being transported to a disposal facility. If this scenario sounds familiar, I can send you the training manual, which they let us take home, and you can compare it to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. They are identical. Hold onto your hat, because it gets even more crazy. We ran the whole scenario, which most of which was done outside, but some of it had to be done in a huge building that was set up as though it were outside. This is where we had to do out "testing". At this point, all of us, including the instructors were in hazmat suits with SCBA and taped up gloves and boots. No outside air in or out. Once we were done with that part of the scenario, we had to go through a complete decon and very careful removal of our gear. During the testing phase the instructors kept asking everyone if they had headaches and kept checking our eyes to see if anyone had pinpoint pupils. I'm sure you understand that this is an indicator of exposure to a nerve agent. The whole thing comes to an end, everyone gets out of their gear and back from their different areas as the whole thing was a round-robin type of event, and we gather back in one of the huge classrooms for a debrief. We are all chatting and the instructors all come in and tell us that everyone did well and there were no issues. They then told us that we were all exposed to VX gas!! Which is why they were asking about headaches and checking our eyes. Now whether or not they actually DID expose us to that is anyone's guess, as they could have just told us that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. They said it was to get us to trust our gear and training. Then, on the day we all left, at like 5 am, we had to get our blood drawn again. I can't believe I'm just now thinking about all of this. But it's been a number of years. I'm sure there's a bunch of things I left out that I'll think of later. But those are the things that stuck in my memory that I thought everyone would find interesting. Apparently, this training looks good on a resume because I put it on mine when applying to a local fire department and during the interview I was questioned about it pretty hard. It seems the guy questioning me applied to go and was denied. He was pissed that I got to go and he didn't. I checked the Homeland Sec, site and the CDP and they still offer something similar and a number of other classes at the same place. They had these classes year-round so just imagine the number of people's blood they got over the past 20+ years, if not longer. And oddly enough, I ran across the list of contact info for all the participants that I was in class with. The one guy that stuck out to me was the guy I was with. Older gentleman who was the head fire/ems investigator for DC. I may try contacting him just to see how he is doing.
Consider how many first responders blood samples they have just from this "training" alone. I'm hoping the link I'm putting here works for everyone. I'd love to talk to someone who has been to this training in the past 5 or so years to see what type of final scenario they are using now.
can you upload them to https://catbox.moe and drop the links? having trouble with MEGA