Members of two National Guard Civil Support Teams and the Reno Fire Department responded Monday to a report of a suspicious odor near Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

It was a just a drill, but the reasons behind it were real.

"We become familiar with how the other departments work, so we can respond to terrorist attacks, natural disasters like earthquakes or a hazardous spill," said Sgt. Eulizes Montalvo, a member of the

95th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team from Hayward, Calif.

Montalvo's team and the 92nd Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team from Las Vegas are in Reno this week training with Reno's Hazardous Materials Response Team for chemical, biological, radiological, explosive and nuclear events.

Operation Joint Support was staged Monday at the Nevada Air National Guard base near Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Similar training will occur Wednesday near the Stead Airport in north Reno.

The National Guard teams were created in 1998 by Congress to be the first military responders designated to aid local government emergency workers in the event of terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

The Nevada Guard's support team in Las Vegas aided Metro Police in February when a suspicious substance was found in a hotel room and later identified as deadly ricin.

Reno Battalion Chief Butch Van Leuven said the Guard teams provide essential support to local emergency crews and are especially vital for rural areas of Nevada that don't have the manpower or equipment to handle large-scale events.

"I can make a request through the Nevada Department of Emergency Management and have them support me in whatever emergency we might be having," Van Leuven said. "These training sessions allow us to become familiar with each other's equipment and to help us learn to work together."

Reno fire spokesman Steve Frady said the training exercises allow the hazardous material team and the National Guard teams to learn about each other's abilities and how to improve their interaction.

"They will be looking at the things that go well and the things that don't go well so that if something really happens, they can mesh together," Frady said.

Each Civil Support Team has seven officers and 15 enlisted members from the Army and Air National Guard with a variety of skill. The emergency vehicles include a command vehicle, operations van, a communications vehicle that has satellite communication capabilities and an Analytical Laboratory System van that can detect more than 84,000 organic chemicals, toxic industrial chemicals, explosives, biological agents and other hazardous materials.