Sopping wet, Les Bentley emerged from the yellow decontamination tent cold and disoriented.
He was greeted by two other victims who had experienced the same warm-watered scrub down, shivering in their bathing suits. Just moments before, Bentley was unconscious in a white building - a role he was told to play.
"I just laid there and let them do everything to me," the Holt resident said of the response team, in their airtight suits, that came in to rescue him.
Bentley, along with Stephanie Smith of St. Johns and Lynne Campbell of Lansing, volunteered to take part in a hazardous material training exercise Friday at the MSU Firing Range on Jolly Road. The training was conducted by the Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division, or EMHSD.
Several area police and fire departments, as well as the Michigan National Guard's 51st Civil Support Team, were practicing their readiness and response as a collective unit to a hazardous material, or hazmat situation. These groups are capable of coming together if hazardous materials such as anthrax, tularemia or botulism were present, said First Lt. Charles Loader, commanding officer of the Michigan State Police EMHSD.
"This is the kind of thing you'd see in an actual event - the kind of response to hazmat," he said, referring to the simulation. "There are 111 jurisdictions throughout the state that have existing emergency management programs."
Chris Kelenske, assistant commander of the Michigan State Police EMHSD, said going through such a simulation is imperative.
"It's critical this happens. It gives us a chance to test out the systems and develop the relationships between the different disciplines and agencies. It's easier when dealing with people from before," Kelenske said. "It's no different than a regular basis, it just has a terrorism flair to it."
For all these groups to come together, one simple thing must happen - a phone call.
"Phones start going and people start responding," said Jim Porcello, manager of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security staff. "It's preparedness, it's homeland security - that's exactly what it is."
It's not just hazardous situations that call for the different agencies; other events use their help as well.
"Anytime something big is going on, like the Common Ground music festival, they're at centers ready to respond," Porcello said.
This particular exercise centered around a building that was believed to contain suspicious-looking gas and a possible hazardous device, such as a bomb, in the mailbox stationed in front of it.
First Lt. Penny Fischer of the MSU police department said the MSU police played a supporting role in the exercise that was staged to take place on MSU's campus.
"This is designed to see how we can do this and practice working together," she said.
Fischer said there have been no incidents of the simulation's magnitude that have occurred on campus, but assuredly said they would be ready if something like that were to happen.
"We develop a plan, train people for the plan and do an exercise to see if it works. Then we're ready for the real event," she said.
