Specializing in Transportation and Travel
Subjects For More than 35 years


Stock Photography / Illustrated Articles

051019 Members of a military Civil Support Team (WMD) check for casualties aboard a retired Boston subway car that now rests inside the tunnel. The car is used to simulate a variety of public transit environments.

Ernest H. Robl stock photos:
Center for National Response

The Center for National Response is a unique government facility for training emergency responders to cope with a variety of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) incidents.

The main component of the site is the abandoned Memorial Tunnel that once served the West Virginia Turnpike. The tunnel became redundant when the highway was four-laned (as an Interstate highway) on a slightly different alignment.

The tunnel has been sealed off and filled with a variety of "props" including wrecked vehicles of all types. Staff at the site can stage a variety of scenarios, many of which require responders to work in either near or total darkness and in smoke-filled environments. (The site uses non-toxic theatrical smoke, but responders are required to work with breathing equipment as if they were in a real smoke environment.

Note: The photos at left are murky but are a realistic depiction of the smoke-filled environment inside the tunnel where visibility often extends only a foot or two.

The site is particularly important for the training of Civil Support Teams (CST) specializing in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) incidents. CSTs are part of each state's National Guard structure but are full-time federally funded elite soldiers with highly specialized training. These units are designed to be the liason between the government and local responders. The CSTs usually train with local emergency responders from their home state. At the time these photos were made, a California CST was training with firemen from San Francisco area. Scenarios included response to a Bay Area incident aboard a BART train.

051033 A CST member exits from a narrow staircase inside the tunnel while sweeping an area for remaining hazards and casualties.

051038 CTS members decontaminate a simulated casulty of a WMD attack. The training site uses role-players to simulate some casualties, but bodies buried under rubble and other fatalities are simulated with dummies.

051004 Logo of the CNR on its administration building.
051008 The sealed off former tunnel entrance.

The photos on this page were made for a feature in HST Today (Homeland Security Today) magazine, for which I also provided the text. The article appeared in the November 2005 issue and began as follows:

By ERNEST H. ROBL

Inside the Memorial Tunnel in West Virginia, the smoke was so thick that even the beams of the strong helmet-mounted and hand-held lights penetrated only a foot or two. Low air and motion detector alarms would occasionally bleat out their calls, mixed with the heavy breathing of men wearing full face masks and the scraping sounds of equipment being dragged along the tunnel floor.

But at that site, that was a perfectly normal situation.

The Memorial Tunnel, once part of the West Virginia Turnpike and abandoned when the highway was four-laned on a slightly different alignment, now has a new role, training emergency responders in subterranean search and rescue, and particularly response to mass casualty events in tunnels or other confined spaces. .....

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