Photo By Staff Sgt. Dana Tourtellotte | Kascha Homontowski, 633d Civil Engineer Squadron emergency management planner, logs...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. — The quarterly emergency management (EM) reporting process was recently modernized by the 633d Civil Engineering Squadron EM team on at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, Feb. 7, 2025.
The EM team implemented a new evolution of the Command-and-Control Incident Management Emergency Response Application web application (C2IMERA) that they can now utilize to track accountability metrics for the training statuses of emergency response members, crash-grid maps, building numbers, shelter-in-place program data, and personnel information.
“Quarterly Emergency Management Reports used to be on spreadsheets that would have to be turned into PDF files, routed for signature, and then sent to the Installation Office of Emergency Management, but now it’s all on C2IMERA in its own tab and it’s a ‘living’ document,” said U. S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Kayla Casellas, 633d CES emergency management operations apprentice. “[Now] Unit Emergency Preparedness Coordinators can edit information at any time, providing the most up-to-date information possible and ensuring everyone who needs to have immediate access does.”
By adding unit reporting capabilities to C2IMERA, the emergency operations personnel on both installations of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, who are geographically separated by nearly 20 miles, gained remote access to comprehensive information. Personnel responding to any emergency now have key information all at their fingertips.
Incorporating emergency management reporting information into C2IMERA required time and resources upfront, said Kurtzhals, so leadership support was crucial.
"From the inception of C2IMERA at JBLE in January of 2021, we have had the support of installation leadership,” said Kenneth Kurtzhals, 633d Civil Engineering Squadron emergency management operations chief. “The Langley installation commander [in 2021] had just taken command at JBLE after recently experiencing the hurricane that devastated Tyndall Air Force Base. He really understood the value of what this tool could potentially do if the EM team was given a chance to optimize it’s use at JBLE, and these modernizations are a result of that chance.”
Kurtzhals says initial feedback from users about C2IMERA has been positive primarily because the updates offer easier access to real-time data with faster processing timelines. This allows information to be more efficiently validated across the units and the installation. He emphasized that this responsiveness is crucial in emergencies, where accurate and timely information can impact outcomes.
As JBLE works to continue improving C2IMERA utilization, through the creation of customized application design features, Kurtzhals says, one of his goals is to share the lessons learned and best practices with other military installations. His hope is to foster an evolution of emergency response capabilities whose designs on C2IMERA can be easily emulated by other EM teams enhancing readiness across the enterprise.
| Date Taken: | 04.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.11.2025 15:30 |
| Story ID: | 495149 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 75 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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