In 1995, the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area created the Metropolitan Medical Strike Team (MMST).  The MMST program, which was funded by Congress as an outgrowth of the Department of Justice’s new domestic preparedness initiative, expanded to dozens of metropolitan areas in the US.  Locally, MMST was a joint effort between Washington, DC; Arlington County, Virginia; and Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland.  The MMST was meant to provide hazardous materials and weapons of mass destruction response capability through the provision of specialized equipment and a multidisciplinary team of subject matter experts.  It represented one of the earliest forms of coordinated terrorism response planning across first responder agencies.