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[music]
[sound of the earthquake]
[Japanese voices, reacting to the tsunami]
Director Ken Myers: Well, I will tell you the nuclear crisis
in Japan following the situation of the Fukushima
reactors was a terrible tragedy.
Ronnie Faircloth: We have a small detachment 300 meters
from the U.S. Forces, Japan Headquarters.
We picked up the phone and said, "Mike, walk down the street.
Re-introduce yourself to the staff. Let them know
who you are, where you're from
and what capabilities you bring to bear."
Voigt: Now these folks that are stationed there, even though
they're On-Site Inspection, they're cross-trained as
consequence management folks. And that's exactly what
they then kicked into in that role, plus our facilities there
served as the basing area as we moved other consequence
management and other reachback folks into country to help
the Government of Japan handle Fukushima.
Faircloth: The radiation exposure coming off of that
civil nuclear reactor will kill you just as well as a nuclear
weapon. So within minutes, we had people
at the Headquarters of the U.S. Military.
Ron Meris: Who knew that Fukushima was going to happen
due to a earthquake and a tsunami. Okay?
So what do we need for that? We needed some type of
hydrologist to understand the water itself.
We needed also nuclear physicists, not just nuclear
weapons specialists. We needed nuclear reactor specialists.
We have those on-team, we were able to get those experts,
to actually concentrate on solving the immediate needs for
answering the questions for that.
Doug Bruder: We were basically feeding a lot of our expertise
in terms of nuclear alarms, nuclear spread, atmospheric
spread as well as ground water flow and flow into the ocean.
Those types of things were done, and - and we provided very
strong support, but generally through the folks
that we had on the ground there.
Myers: It wasn't just the nuclear threat on land.
It wasn't just the nuclear reactor. All of that nuclear
material was spilling into the ocean, and it was spreading
around the Pacific Ocean. And the United States Navy
was potentially at threat, because the last thing
you want to do is take a carrier strike force through
a large nuclear contaminated area.
So there were some very interesting moments
where we were in direct contact with the United States Navy,
recommending paths to stay out of
nuclear contaminated area.
There are a lot of people around here who boast
that they were driving the carriers,
they were driving the cruisers and destroyers
to keep them out of harm's way.
Faircloth: We were exchanging information routinely,
all day and all night, so that we were assisting in an
integrated - integrated U.S. Government response.
Meris: There were at least 20 different agencies, or
20 different type of requests coming in for analyst
information. So at that time were working at least 7 to 10
analysts working a problem continuously, giving answers
virtually every hour. Doesn't matter whether it's through OSD,
through the - through PAYCOM - for this point or through other
staffs and agencies throughout the United States.
Faircloth: So it was fortuitous that we had people close,
but, again, it's that expertise that we're training in people
on how to support others in consequence of execution.
Voigt: That was a tremendous success because there was -
really in the world - that could do what we were doing
as quickly as we were doing it for the Japanese people.
Myers: And after the crisis had been averted, we reached some
level of normalcy again, the Japanese Defense Minister
and the Ambassador asked to visit DTRA.
The most interesting thing was as they were leaving,
the Defense Minister turned to me and he said,
"We need a DTRA. How do you create a DTRA?"
And I didn't have a good answer.
Because this agency has been brought together
so many unique skill-sets and responsibilities
and experiences. It's nuclear physicists, microbiologists,
special operators, you name it, all coming together in one.
But I don't think there's any higher compliment
than a foreign official - a Defense Minister
of another country coming here, a) to thank us for our role,
but b) to ask us some advice on how they can try and
replicate us, because right now there is
no other organization like this in the world,
and - and that's - that's something special.
[ music ends ]