Radiological Monitoring

[ThorntonOL]

Thanks for the info, just noticed while reading the Disaster Relief Ribbon thread, some of the requirements for the ribbon are other than the practice missions are a bunch of courses.
A small but somewhat sizeable portion is on Radiological monitoring. I understand this is required for the disaster relief ribbon but why are we taking them if we aren't even allowed to do these mission with AF coverage? Are we covered by the requesting agency or am I conpletely befuddled with this other topic?
Just trying to understand something in the ES field other than what a ground team and leader are/is.

[Short Field]

^^^ They are not required for the Disaster Relief Ribbon.  In addition to the five sorties, you must complete two of seven other requirements.    The radiological related requirements comprise three of the seven requirements.  So they are options, not requirements.

My understanding of the radiological monitoring ops quals is that if there is a local requirment, then the agency needing the support will provide the training.

[ThorntonOL]

I apologize.
I misread it and after reading it, I saw where I goofed up.
Thanks for setting me straight.

[KyCAP]

Thornton - I think that perhaps you have a valid point though.  Maybe that language for RM should be redacted/modified with something else more in scope with our mission for DR these days that Red Cross / FEMA offers.. Like Rather than RM that should be FEMA ICS 19000 (How to run Katrina level Disaster) or something...

[SAR-EMT1]

FEMA ICS 19000 (How to run Katrina level Disaster) or something...

LOL...

[ThorntonOL]

I've been a bit bored lately and have some extra time and have completed some FEMA courses relating to our topic and am wondering how often and where do the residence course like is 300 and is 400 happen and how often? Am also looking to get the Radiological monitoring stuff done outside of CAP and am wondering from those with expereince and previos training, who is better to go through FEMA, Red Cross, or someone else?

[arajca]

It's ICS300 and ICS400, not is 300/400. As for where and when, contact your local emergency manager or fire dept. They usually get the information.

For the radiological monitoring training, contact your state office of emergency management. They'll know if such a thing is offered in your state and if there is a possibility of yuor qualifying to take it.

[NavLT]

ICS 300 and ICS400 are held by the states via Fema.  In NY the Local Emergency Managment office contacts SEMO (State Emergency Managment) and asks to teach a class (assuming they have a qualified Instructor) and Semo sends the books, tests...etc.

[NCR HSO]

I received the following from John Desmarais, at NHQ - a while back.

"The Air Force has directed that we remove the radiological monitoring qualifications from the ES program in the next revision to CAPR 60-3, so those qualifications will not be around much longer.  Additionally, the current guidance is that the training be both knowledge and practical based with experience using the equipment in the training, and the IS course does not provide that."

I hope that helps.

Take care!

Chris

[ThorntonOL]

I should clarify my postion on the RM training. I was looking for information on who to contact and see if I can take the course or not. Wasn't going to apply it to CAP as it's been mentioned that they are getting rid of that mission. (?)

[SAR-EMT1]

Best bet is to contact your local Fire Dept and have them put you in touch with the state Emergency Management Agency.

[lordmonar]

Any USAF base also could give you this training.  The CE readiness flight is in charge of what used to be the disaster control group (Don't know what they are called now).  Years ago I was on their support team....and we got radiological monitoring as well as shelter monitoring, chem warfare decon and a lot of other cool skills.

So...they have both the knowledge and the tools to do hands on training.  However.....if CAP and the USAF wants us to drop that as one of our missions I don't see the point.

[heliodoc]

^

Maybe it is the CAP, Inc stuff rather than being a true gov agency, skill levels, not being responders in the TRUE sense like police and fire who are going to be tasked with this type of operation, insurance FECA and FTCA in the hot zone, especially that in a hot zone , has that been checked yet??

CAP is still a great organization BUT it is not trained to all of these things except support in floods, SDIS missions,  SAR, etc.

But if the AF and CAP are getting out of it after all these years of being around RM, well that is another thing with their intestinal fortitude in assiting in response issues.   We, in that case, will be nothing but support personnel

But if you can get the training , Great!  It will beunder someone else's auspices.............

[DNall]

DNall had looked into that and had thought that he had found some equipment that would work well for just this sort of thing.  I don't recall the details. 

We had a big long conversation on this a few months back. There are more modern light weight sensors with much better detection properties.

DHS was a few years ago looking at deploying a whole bunch of UAVs, these were developed at Sandia for use on those platforms.

What we looked at was a package of two external hard mount sensors, that IIRC ran under 25lbs including the laptop they plus into. It could do both rad & chemical detection, work to distinguish from natural background rad, and graphic mapping via the GPS. What you got in the air was a turn the hell around alarm & some real general info. The real hardcore computer work happened on the ground. You could in theory detect a device from the air & narrow it to some kind of smaller area (very much like ELT search in fact), but of course it is very contingent on what kind of shielding they got the package in.

Application wise, we talked about:

• Civilian HAZMAT assist
• traditional radmon
• route survey - meaning look for moving bombs
• detailed mapping - meaning add detail to the sat imaging for background rad, so in a look for bomb situation you can better distinguish what doesn't belong
• some inland versions of the the environmental monitoring kind of stuff the CG does in the water
• etc... a couple other bright ideas I don't happen to recall off hand

It's a good addition to our airframes & and about dummy proof for the operators. The cost is pretty low & of course would be borne by DHS, deployed under OPCON of 1AF/Northcom (which is who we work for on all AFAMs anyway).