Exploring the Role of Civil Support Teams

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Civil Support Teams
Civil Support Teams (CST) have become a significant force multiplier of the Department of Defense domestic CBRN response capabilities. They have also become a resource that Local and Federal Response agencies have heavily relied upon for assistance during events that have overwhelmed their capabilities. Civil Support Teams are involved in the public safety and emergency planning of large scale events nationwide. They have also been utilized for real world response events to assist civilian response agencies with any request that is deemed to be within the parameters of their mission set. These teams are comprised of 22 Title-32 National Guard soldiers that remain on call 365 days a year prepared to deploy in support …show more content…

Florida, California, and New York each have two teams. They are joint units with eighteen Army National Guard and four Air National Guard personnel that are all Active Guard Reserve positions. The team is commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel and has an Army or Air Force First Sergeant. There are six sections within the unit: Command, Operations, Decontamination, Communications, Medical and Survey. Each of these positions requires extensive training both in their MOS and CST mandated training to become fully qualified for their assigned position. Some of the capabilities within the unit include a fully equipped CBRN Reconnaissance Team, secure and unsecure communications suite, technical decontamination line, medical response section with a Physician’s Assistant and Medical Operations Officer, ISO Certified Mobile Analytical Laboratory, and Hazard Prediction Plume Modeler. Each of these capabilities provides the Incident Commander with an arsenal of tools to help mitigate any situation that may …show more content…

A Civil Support Team will not directly assume Command of an incident upon arrival to the scene. Their role is to support the requesting authorities. The Civil Support Teams primary mission while deployed is to identify, advise, assist, and assess while on scene. Identification occurs while the Recon Team implements their equipment to get preliminary findings and samples for analysis. The Operations Cell is responsible for assessing all information and providing a clear continuity of operation and information flow to the Incident Commander. The CST Commander will utilize all the information at hand to advise the incident Commander and help solidify their decisions. The entire unit will assist the Incident Commander by augmenting their response force as needed with specific task sets. During these four tasks the CST Commander will remain in constant contact with the Incident Commander keeping them abreast of any relevant information and continuously monitoring the

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