JUNEAU, Alaska –
Virginia National Guard Soldiers and Airmen assigned to the Fort Pickett-based 34th Civil Support Team joined other CSTs and emergency response organizations for Exercise ORCA 25 June 9-13, 2025, in Juneau, Alaska.
The mission of the 34th CST is to support civil authorities in a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive incident, and the evaluated tasks included deploying the team, establishing communications and medical support, conducting survey, technical decontamination and analytical functions as well as conducting interagency coordination.
Exercise ORCA is a full-scale all-hazards chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives joint and interagency training exercise testing and evaluating the operational capability of the whole-of-government emergency management system, according to a release from the Alaska National Guard. In addition to the 34th CST, Alaska’s 103rd CST, California’s 9th CST, Montana’s 83rd CST and Oregon’s 102nd CST also participated in the exercise, along with other federal, state and local agencies.
The long-distance travel provides a rare opportunity fo3 the 34th CST, according to Lt. Col. Thomas Mecadon, commander of the 34th.
"ORCA 2025 presented the 34th CST with a vital opportunity to revalidate air load operations, an essential capability not exercised since 2017," said Mecadon. "Through planning, disciplined rehearsals and exemplary execution, the unit achieved a strategic deployment of over 3,800 miles from home station to Alaska. This capability is vital to CST operations and has affirmed the team’s ability and capacity to respond decisively to missions across any distance and at any time."
The training event simulated a planned terrorist attack using chemical weapons. Members of the 34th CST’s survey team, Tech. Sgt. Taylor Lincoln and Staff Sgt. Samantha Sanders, provided a reconnaissance survey of the suspected chemical lab. During their entry, Lincoln and Sanders had to quickly size up the situation by piecing together the discovery of documents detailing toxic chemical formulas, reading the labels of chemical vials, and interpreting the lab setup to determine what the rogue chemists intended to do.
“We found a bomb-making setup and a drone that is likely a dispersal device,” Lincoln, a Dixmont, Maine, native said. “We also found lab gear that was probably two steps away from possibly being a g-series agent setup.”
G-series agents include tabun, soman and sarin, the chemical agent used in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack which killed 14 people.
Following the survey team’s entry, samples were collected and analyzed.
One of the biggest benefits of the exercise for the 34th CST is the joint operations with other states’ CSTs, according to Sanders.
“It’s a great opportunity,” said Sanders. “We have gorgeous scenery, and you can’t complain about that, but we get to come together and work with other teams. We’re East Coast, so we work the teams there, but we don’t often see the teams that are here. It’s nice to branch out, make new connections, and see how other teams perform the job we do.”
The 34th CST is divided into six sections: command, operations, communications, administration/logistics, medical/analytical and survey. Each team member completes between 500 and 900 hours of specialized training during their first year of assignment and continues advanced training throughout their tenure with multiple agencies including the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the National Fire Academy, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The team’s primary response area includes a 300-mile radius from its home station at Fort Pickett and stretches as far north as Pennsylvania and as far south as South Carolina. They maintain personnel on standby at all times, can deploy an advance team within 90 minutes of notification and the main body deploys within three hours.
The unit’s assigned transportation includes a command vehicle, operations trailer, a communications vehicle called the unified command suite which provides a broad spectrum of secure communications capabilities, an analytical laboratory system vehicle containing a full suite of analysis equipment to support the complete characterization of an unknown hazard and several general purpose vehicles. The CST normally deploys using its assigned vehicles, but it can be airlifted as required.
Read more about the CST at https://vngpao.info/34thCST.
(Additional reporting by Maj. David Bedard, Alaska National Guard)