LOS ALAMOS - "It looks like some kid was upset, a domestic terrorist, looking to make a biotoxin, something to kill some people, hurt some people."
Santa Fe Fire Department training captain Shaun Northness was being debriefed. He and three other members of the Fire Department's part-time hazmat team had searched a trailer on Los Alamos National Laboratory property filled with evidence of a terrifying plot: bloody gloves and syringes; written instructions under the heading "Influenza;" unidentifiable powders and liquids; a sealed glove box encasing a metal container bubbled over with purple foam; pinned-up photos of decaying animals; and a side room with blood palettes showing obvious fungal growth, near plastic bins holding two live ducks and two live chickens. There was a dead duck on the floor.
"They're doing testing on animals for some kind of bioterrorist ..." Northness didn't finish his sentence, but LANL's Brad Lounsbury was pleased as they concluded the debriefing.
The SFFD team did miss some evidence (including the dead duck on the floor - it's hard to look down in the puffy neon Level-A hazmat suits), but it had entered the trailer safely, thoroughly documented important evidence, tested chemicals for identification and reasoned quickly from scattered papers that some Colorado State grad-school student was planning to unleash havoc somewhere critical.
Wednesday was the first day of competition in the lab's 14th annual Hazmat Challenge, in which 14 hazmat teams (mostly from New Mexico) converge deep in the woods on LANL property to run through eight elaborate simulations of varying hazardous-chemical scenarios. They are judged on all sorts of criteria, including time and safety.
A giant oil tanker has tipped onto, and crushed, the hood of a truck; the tanker is leaking in several places and must be sealed by team members in bulky firefighter gear, including 30-pound tanks and gas masks. Another simulation involves sealing a break atop a two-story-tall railcar.
LANL's emergency response division leader, Jeff Dare, said planning for the challenge begins each year in February or March, and setup for the exercises starts in May. Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency join lab workers in evaluating performance.
"This is an important event, because people can share their lessons," Dare said. "Here you can make mistakes and there's no real penalty. No one gets hurt."
Participants say the competition is minimal; Hazmat Challenge is about training.
"This is an awesome experience," said Lt. Floyd Hancock of the Portales Fire Department. "There's nothing else like this in the state offered for HAZMAT guys."
Hancock said hazardous materials calls in Portales typically involve ammonia spills at one of the town's cheese plants. Occasionally, they'll have to check on something mysterious at Eastern New Mexico University. Tipped tankers, Hancock said, are a possibility for hazmat crews in any part of the state, because of interstate traffic.
Northness said the Santa Fe team gets only five or six calls a year, and those typically involve a mysterious package (anthrax, potentially) being delivered to a state official at the Roundhouse. (One of the stations at the Hazmat Challenge involves sorting through mail to identify which letters or packages most likely contain dangerous chemicals.)
Getting the opportunity to assess extreme situations, like the would-be Colorado State chemical terrorist, allows teams like SFFD's to sharpen a skill set that might only be required in one very unlikely, but still very dangerous, real-life situation.
"That's why we're up here," Northness said. "It's an opportunity to get hands-on."
