Photo By Wayne Hall | Members of the Pennsylvania National Guard Joint Operations Center staff participate...... read more read more
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FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. – December 21 might be the first day of winter, but the Pennsylvania National Guard did not wait until then to ensure it’s ready for extreme winter weather.
Several dozen Guard members from around the state participated in a winter storm tabletop exercise on Dec. 20.
The virtual exercise was coordinated by the Pennsylvania National Guard Joint Staff at the Joint Operations Center at Fort Indiantown Gap. It involved representatives from Pennsylvania’s three geographic task forces – PTF West, PTF North and PTF South – and its two functional task forces – TF Aviation and TF Support.
The different task force headquarters participated virtually from numerous locations across the state.
“The intent of the exercise was to be a rehearsal for winter storm activations this winter and also an introduction for anyone who is new to [domestic operations] either at the Joint Staff and at the PTF or task force level,” said Maj. James O’Shea, domestic operations training officer and one of the exercise’s coordinators.
The scenario for the exercise was a major snowstorm that struck the center of the state and involved all five task forces.
The exercise allowed the Joint Staff and the different headquarters staffs to discuss topics they would be required to coordinate during an actual event. It was broken down into four parts of a winter storm activation: alert, assemble, deploy and recovery.
“It was fairly typical mission that the national guard does,” said Maj. John Sauser, future plans officer on the Joint Staff and one of the exercise’s coordinators. “We had a fake winter storm and had some state missions that we gave the units to assess their response, like where they put their troops and vehicles.”
This type of exercise is conducted regularly, but it typically involves one or two task forces, not all five, O’Shea said.
“Any given year, both at the task force level and at the joint staff, you’re bound to have some turnover and people who are new to the DOMOPS process,” O’Shea said.
While O’Shea is not certain exactly how many people participated in the exercise, he noted that at one point there were 40 different locations logged in, and many of those locations had multiple people participating.
O’Shea and Sauser agreed that the exercise went very well overall.
“There are a couple changes we’ll probably make for next time,” O’Shea said. “Next time around, we’ll probably plan it earlier. It didn’t impact us this year, but next year we could get hit with a winter storm in early December and we would’ve missed the opportunity to have a rehearsal.”
| Date Taken: | 12.21.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 12.21.2022 16:27 |
| Story ID: | 435683 |
| Location: | FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, PENNSYLVANIA, US |
| Web Views: | 48 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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