JBLE goes radioactive

The 633rd Civil Engineer Squadron emergency management and 633rd Aerospace Medicine Squadron bioenvironmental flights teamed up for a joint radiological response training at Joint Base Langley–Eustis, Virginia, Oct. 3, 2018.

“With the rise of terrorism, it is not necessarily easy to accomplish but it’s possible,” said U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Brian Tripp, 633rd CES emergency management journeyman. “Radiological exposure devices can be placed in a high volume, high traffic area and expose a whole bunch of people to harmful radiation.”

A realistic scenario was developed, where a contractor came across a suspicious item, and days later was hospitalized with simulated radiation burns and radiation poisoning. Both flights were integrated into response teams to perform an eight-leg Radial Survey.

“This kind of training really hones in the capabilities and skills that can be performed as a joint team,” said Staff Sgt. Matthew Footit, 633rd AMDS bioenvironmental health element NCO in charge. “What they bring and what we bring has to be the same, and understanding how to work with each other specifically in these kind of scenarios--that is super important.”

According to Footit, the bioenvironmental engineering flight’s expertise is quantifying and providing a health risk assessment for exposure while the emergency management flight provides the technicians for radiological and hazardous material.

“We’ve been focusing on that as emergency management and bio-environmental engineer; to do a joint training and focus on radiological aspects of our career fields and get good hands on training with the equipment to remind us of what we learned back in tech school,” said Airman 1st Class Dane Stevenson, 633rd CES emergency management apprentice. “This is kind of the core principal of emergency management to make sure we’re able to prevent, prepare, recover and respond to any sort of attack or in this case radiological outbreak.”

During the exercise, the teams surveyed the location for radiation, pinpointing the areas with the highest rates of radiation, and finally identifying the radiological isotope.

The teams led their survey with beta-gamma detectors because gamma rays are the most harmful to the body, and the ones with the least amount of protection available against them. Close behind were different x-ray and alpha particle detectors followed by a land navigator and a team lead with a survey sheet to relay the information via walkie talkie for the written health risk assessment.

“I personally think that radiation training is important because we as a flight train every other week mostly on chemical and biological but not so much on radiation,” said Senior Airman Yoonhong Min, 633rd AMDS bioenvironmental technician. “Now that we started training with emergency management every quarter, we really get to see what we’re supposed to do out there in the field and what our objectives are. It also allows us to troubleshoot if we have equipment malfunction, so it’s very good training.”

Regardless the size, shape or form of any radiological exposure device that may fall into the hands of JBLE—the 633rd CES and 633rd AMDS are ready to answer the call.