Courtesy Photo | Members of the 59th Forward Engineering Support Team-Advanced (FEST-A) at U.S. Army...... read more read more
TULSA, Okla. — It has been a year since the February 2021 cold outbreak hit the Midwest and resulted in damage to dorms and other facilities at U.S. Army Garrison Fort Sill near Lawton Okla., making living conditions unacceptable, and threatening to disrupt Soldier training rotations
The Garrison was expecting an incoming student training group but would have to postpone the rotation because of the damaged facilities and this would have a domino effect on the entire training block and schedule for combat zones.
The damages were primarily the kind caused by extreme cold weather from ice and severe weather. Building standards in that area do not necessarily include allowing for detailed severe weather protection. Extremely cold temperatures caused pipes in ceilings and walls to burst and extensively damaging electrical systems and the Soldiers’ dorm rooms.
“Fort Sill sent up a flag to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters requesting assistance with damage assessments and repairs,” said Tulsa District Emergency Management Chief Bill Smiley. “This request was sent to the Southwestern Division Commander, Brig. Gen. Christopher Beck and he immediately contacted USACE Tulsa District Commander Col. Scott Preston, who in turn convened a leadership meeting to make a quick decision about what could be done to help.” Tulsa District leadership set an immediate intent to support to Fort Sill.
What happened next led to the Tulsa District being recognized as a leader in delivering contingency operations at military installations. The district’s senior leaders quickly diverted the district’s 59th Forward Engineering Support Team-Advanced (FEST-A) from training at Camp Gruber Okla. to Fort Sill. The FEST-A is a part of the USACE - Field Force Engineering program. This small, advance engineering team rapidly deploys worldwide and provides technical engineer support, conducts critical infrastructure surveys, engineer reconnaissance operations, base camp planning, geospatial operations, as well as construction planning, design and management capabilities.
The FEST-A team arrived at Fort Sill the next day showing that USACE could provide expeditionary support when requested providing a level of confidence to base leadership that USACE could provide engineering support. This opened the door to considering USACE for future contingency operations supporting the military.
Over the following days the team was augmented by additional engineering support staff who provided engineering requirements for the mission.
“When the FEST Team arrived, they took immediate support control, with requests down to the project office,” said Smiley. “As they were able to determine what the needs were, then we supported them in Emergency Management with providing additional engineering support. Cost estimators, electrical engineers, structural engineers, every discipline that they would need to do those assessments we provided those to them.”
The team completed 151 assessments in about 10 days, providing cost analysis and cost estimates of the extent of needed repairs. Fort Sill was then able to roll up that information and move quickly to make the repairs. The USACE Fort Sill Area Office provided Program Management support to the team. Fort Sill was able to have the contractor come in to begin repairs within a day or two of the assessment completion. As a result, Fort Sill was ready to accept the new round of Soldiers that were coming in for training without delay.
The Tulsa District Emergency Management is set up for quick responses among the program areas it operates. Those programs are Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies, Stafford Act response for FEMA-assigned missions, and Contingency Operations for which the FEST Team are the primary responders. Contingency Operations provide support to combatant commands with teams of individuals who support whatever missions a combatant command may require within the USACE skill set to deliver engineering technical assistance and world class engineering support.
In the overall emergency management delivery of command intent, Tulsa District seeks to provide an environment with all of these teams. The Emergency Management Delivery Team train constantly and maintain readiness to move out with equipment to support field operations. When the additional staff was requested to support the mission, Tulsa was able to provide a number of staff to go directly to Fort Sill. Tulsa District also has access to a emergency management national enterprise that allows the district to go national with personnel requests and deploy employees from a number of districts who were on scene within days.
“That’s one of the benefits of having an expeditionary emergency force that when command intent requires us to move out we can move now and normally provide responses within one or two days and initially get some project staff there to be making assessments of what’s needed and we can back it up with the additional heavy lift people that are needed,” said Smiley.
This type of support is not well known outside of the emergency management realm. It has not been used very often because there has been a grey area between what the USACE is able to do on FEMA missions with generators and providing support to a military base, during FEMA missions. Now the thinking has translated to what USACE is able to do for contingency operations.
“In reality, we learned that we could do a lot more than we thought we could. It just took leadership to give us the intent and the direction for us to go and that gave us the authority to be able to do what we needed to do to support them,” said Smiley.
“This response received the highest level of quality. It is a great testament to the ability of our emergency management staff that we have here. We were able to provide a field EOC, the logistics staff provided transportation vehicles, all of the support from ancillary staff and our engineering staff and their willingness to jump and jump fast and to serve when there’s a need,” said Smiley. “That’s really what makes Tulsa different than a lot of other districts, because we know what we can do and we know we can do it well, and we’re not scared to go out and do it and then to be flexible enough that we can meet whatever additional requirements that the customer may have. For the future I see this type of response being integrated more so into the areas of emergency management.”
“To be consistent, and this is definitely a center of excellence item, we’ve developed a contingency operation brief that we are going around to the military installations and briefing them on who their primary points of contact are should a contingency operations develop on their bases,” said Smiley. “We’ve already gone to Fort Sill and completed that briefing., It starts with the command of the base and the EMs are involved as the people who organize and lead the team and support the team in whatever they need. We are going to do that at all of our military installations in SWT.”
The Tulsa District plans to engage with Garrison leadership about the capabilities the district has and establishing the necessary relationships to streamline support in the future.
“I can’t comment enough about the willingness of the district staff to step up and go and move and be on call 24-hours a day and get on the road and go, and their willingness to help other people and their desire to help people, whether it’s a tornado or an ice storm or a wildfire or whatever,” said Smiley “Oklahomans step up and do what’s right. That same mentality is throughout Tulsa District in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. The team is really what makes us what we are.”
| Date Taken: | 02.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.08.2022 13:59 |
| Story ID: | 414274 |
| Location: | OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 55 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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