No conspiracy here

COEUR d’ALENE — No. It’s not the Posse Comitatus in town.

The big blue Ford F-450s with federal license plates are Idaho National Guard Civil Support Vehicles assigned to the 101st Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support unit from Gowen Field in Boise.

“We turn a few heads when we are on the road,” said Maj. Tony Vincelli, a commander of the 101st. “We are not the Posse Comitatus. We are just doing some scheduled training in Coeur d’Alene.”

Rather than an anti-government conspiracy group like the Posse Comitatus, this entourage is a civil support team that assists local fire and emergency management agencies with hazardous materials detection and response incidents when necessary.

“We don't have a law enforcement role,” Vincelli said.

The support team was in town to conduct radiation exercises with several local agencies at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds on Wednesday. Vincelli said the special trucks serve different purposes. One truck is a mobile command center, another is a communications truck. They also have an equipment truck and a mobile lab.

The team is comprised of National Guard and Air National Guard personnel, and they only provides support for local agencies.

“People tend to think that when the military shows up, they take over,” Vincelli said. “But that’s not what we do. We are just here to provide support.”

The team travels through the state of Idaho conducting at least 12 exercises per year with local hazardous response units.

“We like to get out and do training with the local response teams,” he said. “We don’t want to be handing out business cards during a hazardous response. We want to make sure we know who we are working with and make sure they know us.”

Kootenai Fire and Rescue Division Chief Dan Ryan said his agency houses the Region 1 Hazardous Response Team for the state of Idaho. Some of his firefighters took the training on Wednesday.

“They do training on any sort of threat with a hazardous material,” Ryan said. “They can assist in something like a chemical agent attack.”

Ryan said the civil support team is very highly trained in weapons of mass destruction, and while the local response teams have well-trained personnel, the 101st has much more expertise.

“We have people who have been to chemistry classes,” Ryan said. “But they have actual chemists with Ph.Ds that assist us.”

He said the support team also helps the local agencies understand the capabilities of some of their hazmat equipment.

Coeur d’Alene Fire Deputy Chief Glen Lauper said several agencies participated in the training on Wednesday, including his agency and the Kootenai County Office of Emergency Management.

Sandy Von Behren, director of the OEM, said Idaho is lucky to have a civil support team as a resource.

“There are only a handful of these in the nation,” she said. “So we are fortunate to have one close by.”

Von Behren, who has been in local emergency management for 25 years, said she can recall one time that area agencies have actually requested services from the 101st.

“Actually we used them in a big exercise we did in Bayview several years ago,” she said. “We had an exercise up at the Navy base and we called them in to provide communications for us.”