National Guard team conducts hazardous materials training in Turlock

If it looked like a disaster in a Turlock orchard on Thursday, that was by design.

About 70 National Guard soldiers conducted a training exercise on Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and High Yield Explosive (CBRNE) Enhanced Response Force Package. In plain English, that means a mass-casualty hazardous materials situation.

They were trained “to locate and extract victims from a contaminated environment, perform mass patient/casualty decontamination, and provide treatment to stabilize patients for evacuation,” public affairs Spc. Brandon Honig said in an email.

The soldiers made a concession to the above-normal temperatures Thursday: They left off their masks, typically worn in such an incident.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 6:38 PM with the headline "National Guard team conducts hazardous materials training in Turlock."