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Bioenvironmental Engineering craftsman’s work ethic helps AFMC CBRN team make command history

  • Published
  • By Holly Birchfield
  • 78 ABW/PA
Robins AFB, Ga. --  Staff Sgt. Rashad Barnes of the 78th Aerospace Medicine Squadron may be seen as a quiet man to most people he meets. But, his dedication on the job and at home speaks volumes about his "give it all you've got" attitude.

It's that winning approach to life that helped land the bioengineering craftsman on Air Force Materiel Command's five-person Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Challenge Team which ultimately won the 2007 Air Force-level CBRN Challenge at Brooks City-Base in San Antonio in mid-December 2007.

The win was a first in this area for AFMC.

Sergeant Barnes's team, comprised of Airmen from Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass; Tinker AFB, Okla; Eglin AFB, Fla; and Edwards AFB, Calif., competed against CBRN Challenge teams from other major commands, facing scenarios similar to those in the real world.

"For the wartime, our main objective is to detect chemical warfare agents when we're at deployed locations or in garrison," he said. "We have various equipment we use to detect chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear warfare agents. We (use that equipment) to identify (those agents) and we can quantify and be able to give a health risk assessment."

The challenge offered a bit of a twist for team members.

"The scenarios were based on real-world experiences," Sergeant Barnes said. "It was challenging to figure out what was really there because we got very little information. Sometimes, we didn't have all of the equipment we normally would have to assess what the hazard is. So we sort of had to make do with what we had and what information we got."

The everyday tasks of his job aren't as cumbersome as those that challenged him at the competition.

"Actually, our role is very broad," Sergeant Barnes said. "Bioenvironmental Engineering is the military form of Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency," he said. "We do occupational health assessments for pretty much every shop on base to determine hazards with that shop."

Additionally, Sergeant Barnes and his co-workers test all drinking water on base and conduct gas mask and respirator testing for deploying Airmen and individual shops.

Sergeant Barnes said the challenge was just that for the team - a challenge.

"We were the only team out there where every person came from a different base," he said. "There were other teams where they had two people who were at one base and two people who maybe were from a different base, but we were the only team that had five different people from five different bases."

The father of two said the team's differences actually work in its favor.

"We never worked with each other before and we never knew each other before from other bases," he said. "We got there a day early to just meet and greet and just get spun up real quickly on our different experiences at different bases. The next day, we started the actual challenge and we actually worked very well together."

Sergeant Barnes' co-workers weren't surprised by his team's accomplishment. After all, the team had a winning hand with the Robins' Airmen on board.

"He's always a team player and very hard working," said 1st Lt. Paula Delapasse, a bioenvironmental engineer in the 78th AMDS who has worked with the staff sergeant for two and a half years. "He always finds ways to reach a solution and solve the problem whatever the task is at hand. So, he's a great person to work with."

Tech. Sgt. Tim Houey, Readiness and Training NCOIC in the 78th AMDS who has worked with Sergeant Barnes for six months, said Sergeant Barnes is someone he can count on.

"His knowledge of the equipment and the limitations of the equipment and just his overall attitude made him a likely choice for the AFMC CBRN Challenge team," he said. "For me, he's my go-to guy. He's someone I can go to anytime."

While several members of his work family have congratulated him on his accomplishment with the team, he said it's an accomplishment that's not all his own.

"Ever since we won the CBRN Challenge, everybody has been joking around calling me, 'Super Troop' or 'CBRN King,' but I just want to make sure everybody knows that it's not an actual individual award. It's more of a team award. It's not just for the five people who competed, but for the base level too because I'm just part of a whole and the whole being the 78th Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight here. So, this award is a team accomplishment at Robins, not just an individual accomplishment for AFMC."

Now that the challenge is over, Sergeant Barnes can get back to the most important team in his life, his family.