Photo By Staff Sgt. Matthew Gunther | New York National Guard Private First Class Daniel Cordero is lowered into a manhole...... read more read more
Subscribe
FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Penn. – Six hundred Soldiers and Airmen from the New York and New Jersey National Guard honed their skills to respond to a terror attack or weapon of mass destruction incident at Fort Indiantown Gap and Fort Drum from September 8-14.
The Soldiers and Airmen are part of the Homeland Response Force, called a HRF for short, which supports the Region II of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA Region II covers New York and New Jersey, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The HRF specializes in dealing with incidents involving Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear contaminants, known as CBRN incidents. These can be either industrial, terror related or from other causes. The force employs a CBRN response task force, with 27 such teams across the country.
The New York and New Jersey Soldiers and Airmen performed a wide range of tasks during their six-day training event, during which the nation marked the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City.
“Overall, I think the team did very well,” said Army National Guard Lt. Col. Joshua Krug, an exercise director and lead for the evaluation of the CBRN response element at Fort Indiantown Gap.
A highlight of the event was to see the unit’s improvement over time as they responded to repeated training missions with little notice, Krug said.
“This is a great tool to test the team’s ability to conduct their mission with no notice,” Krug said. “It is good for commanders (and) leadership to see how their team would do with no train up.”
The Homeland Response Force assists local emergency forces which would respond first to an attack.
The Soldiers and Airmen are trained to extract casualties, decontaminate them, and provide medical triage for civilian emergency responders.
The exercise served as an evaluation and certification for the HRF.
The leaders get valuable feedback from the evaluators, explained Command Sergeant Major Sean Goodridge, the senior enlisted advisor for the 152nd Brigade Engineer Battalion and CBRN response element headquarters.
"The HRF needs to renew this certification periodically and learn from the feedback we receive," Goodridge said. "It is a chance for us to communicate and work together as a team, which you don't want to be doing for the first time in a real-life situation where lives depend on you."
A parallel exercise took place at Fort Drum, New York, involving the command elements of the HRF, built around the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division. Those Soldiers performed staff and leadership actions to deploy and direct the force.
At Fort Indiantown Gap, elements of the CBRN response force operated inside a simulated contaminated incident.
Troops donned t head-to-toe protective suits, overboots, thick rubber gloves and protective masks, and practiced extracting casualties in heat that sometimes went over 90 degrees.
Specialist William Richmond, a Military Police Soldier with the New Jersey Army National Guard’s 328th Military Police Company, whose unit provides site security and supported one of the search and extraction teams, said the event lived up to what he had heard about it.
"This is my first time participating; it was an exciting experience," Richmond said.
"For me, I learned a lot about myself and managing my time, which can be hard to learn without being thrown into a situation like this,” Richmond added.
A key element for leaders is to manage rotations of teams to ensure safety and effectiveness in the protective suits in such high temperatures and at times, heavy rains, evaluators said.
Once on site, the teams ran through their response again and again.
They increased their speed, effectiveness, and efficiency with each repetition, said Senior Airman Casey Grayson, a member of the New York Air National Guard’s 105th Airlift Wing, who was in the medical team.
"This isn't my first rodeo, but I still learn new things every time we do one of these events," Grayson said.
"For example, this is the first time I've taken part in one that had heavy rain, which greatly impacts how we need to move around and treat the patients. Instead of keeping them cool, we must keep them warm and dry,” he said.
Each training exercise was evaluated by National Guard and U.S. Army North experts, Krug explained
“I think the team did very well and improved significantly from day one to day four,” Krug said.
| Date Taken: | 09.16.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 10.12.2022 12:00 |
| Story ID: | 431127 |
| Location: | FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, PENNSYLVANIA, US |
| Web Views: | 128 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, New York, New Jersey National Guard troops hold disaster response training, by SSG Matthew Gunther, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
Army National Guard
