Photo By Staff Sgt. Caitlyn Byrne | Soldiers from 823rd Movement Control Team, an U.S. Army Reserve unit from Montana, and...... read more read more
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CAMP ATTERBURY, Ind. - On a warm summer afternoon, transportation management Soldiers were kept busy as over 100 vehicles and pieces of equipment were shipped to the Camp Atterbury marshaling yard, July 30.
Soldiers of both the 823rd Movement Control Team, an Army Reserve unit from Missoula, Montana, and the 1120th Transportation Battalion, Phoenix, Arizona Army National Guard, have joined forces to support Vibrant Response 14, a training event that is held annually during the months of July and August.
Vibrant Response 14 is designed to exercise the Department of Defense’s ability to deploy and sustain specialized military response forces when requested by civilian authorities. Their mission is to save lives and relieve human suffering in the event of a catastrophic chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) incident.
In the event of a major CBRN incident on homeland soil, both the 823rd MCT and 1120th Transportation Battalion would possibly be called upon to deploy and provide theater support at the disaster area. Theater support includes coordinating equipment and vehicle storage for distribution to the civilian and military forces responding to the event. This exercise provides the opportunity for the both units to train on the critical functions they perform to support the mission.
“All the trucks and pieces of equipment that get shipped to Camp Atterbury have to come through us first,” said Sgt. Sheila Gmach of the 823rd MCT. “Within our first two days of operation, we handled about 80 to 100 trucks and large pieces of equipment that were shipped in for the DCRF, (Defense Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Response Force), and we get an average of 100 vehicles shipped in to us every day.”
VR14 provides an environment for response forces to train on reacting to a CBRN incident.
“I love the training that we are doing here,” said Gmach, smiling. “It’s super exciting to be here performing this mission and doing our jobs. As a Reserve unit, we always love when we get to do our jobs, and when we do them, we do them well. We’re kind of a big deal.”
There are more than 5,500 military and civilian personnel working together during VR 14. While each force has its own mission during the year, they come together during the exercise to ensure they have a fluid and effective plan in the event they are called to respond to a catastrophic disaster in the U.S.
“We don’t usually operate at such a high capacity, and we think that it’s such a wonderful thing having two different states coming together,” said Staff Sgt. Sandra Aldrich, of the 1120th Transportation Battalion, Arizona National Guard. “We’ve merged everything between the Reserves and the National Guard; we share training and knowledge, we’ve even started calling ourselves the '1123rd,' a fusion of the 823rd and the 1120th.
“It’s been an honor serving together, and Vibrant Response has been a great opportunity to get to come out and experience a real-life scenario.”
| Date Taken: | 07.30.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 07.30.2014 18:45 |
| Story ID: | 137771 |
| Location: | CAMP ATTERBURY, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 1,474 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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