Photo By Brad Staggs | A street at Muscatutuck Urban Training Center in Butlerville, Ind., is set up to look...... read more read more
BUTLERVILLE, Ind. — It takes patience to set a car on fire. This is the first thing Staff Sgt. Michael Buckner explained as his team prepared for a post-nuclear blast exercise.
Technically, he said, it takes patience to make a car look like it's on fire when in reality, it's under a controlled burn.
"I have several feet of tubing running from this wrecked truck to a propane tank that I can turn on and off," Buckner explained, a small smile forming on his face. "There is a burn pot in the engine compartment that shoots flame a good four feet if we need it to. We only had one day to set this particular venue up and I think we did a pretty good job."
Burning vehicles and garbage, lots of smoke from smoke candles and fog machines, and signs of distress written on old sheets have turned Muscatatuck Urban Training Center into the epicenter of the federal emergency response training exercise called Vibrant Response. But in the midst of the madness is an underlying current of safety that controls every action.
U.S. Army North wanted a disaster site which looked as real as possible, simulating a town on the edge of a nuclear detonation in the United States. Imagine if a 10-ton nuclear device was set off in downtown Indianapolis and the surviving city was just on the outskirts of the city, such as Greenwood, Ind., is today. That is the look and feel needed for an exercise of this magnitude and Muscatatuck proved to be the perfect location.
Role players were hired and brought in solely for the Vibrant Response, which will involve more than 4,000 participants before it is over. They were brought in to portray the survivors of the town, along with the ills that would be associated with them. Everything from water and food shortages to lawlessness will be represented during the exercise.
Once the role players are taken to their vignette - whether it be a housing complex, a jail, or any of the other venues being portrayed - they are given their assignments. For example, a woman may play a mother who can't find her daughter, or another woman plays a distraught character who will not leave the contaminated area until the rescuers help find her dog.
Some role players were given written instructions outlining a particular injury they suffered. North Vernon, Ind., resident Jason Bensheimer has a laminated index card attached to a string around his wrist which declares that the bomb detonation has made him deaf and given him burns. He's looking forward to playing it up.
"I've been waiting for this ever since I found out about [the exercise] from a friend of mine," Bensheimer said. "I hope being a role-player here will give me the experience to be a leader and help people if something like this ever does really happen."
Vibrant Response is created for just that purpose. The exercise, which takes place from Nov. 5-12, will test federal response to a national emergency and validate our national response teams.
| Date Taken: | 11.07.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 11.07.2009 19:14 |
| Story ID: | 41252 |
| Location: | BUTLERVILLE, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 487 |
| Downloads: | 218 |
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