Wisconsin National Guard Soldiers and Airmen continue to support approximately 1,000 local, federal and military, police and emergency responders from six states in the second week of the National Guard's largest annual training exercise.
Participants of Patriot 2011 - a conglomeration of many national-level organizations, including the FBI, FEMA, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Postal Inspectors and National Guard Soldiers and Airmen - began training at Volk Field Combat Readiness Training Center and neighboring Fort McCoy July 11.
The exercise is intended to develop best practices and refine emergency responses for a variety of contingencies, from terrorist threats to train accidents and exposure from hazardous material spills.
Lt. Col. Eugene Essex, Volk Field's readiness safeguard program director and a lead exercise controller for Patriot 2011, said the entire CRTC is supporting the Patriot Exercise through logistics support and exercise planning. Essex is a member of the readiness safeguard team which operates the simulation cell for the entire exercise.
"We're acting as the overarching command for the players in the field," Essex said. "Overall the big, key things we're looking for are interoperability and interagency coordination."
Volk's CRTC maintains the staffing and infrastructure needed to host such a large-scale exercise, including taking in all of the exercise participants and equipment. The landscape of Volk Field allows for many different emergency response scenarios to play out.
"The exercise exactly mirrors what happens in real world scenarios," said Joel McDearmon, Patriot exercise planner. "The scenarios provide an immediate time of high stress and high frustration, and a tentative response, followed by a fast flow of escalating confidence and response interoperability."
About 10 members of the Regional Emergency All-Climate Training Center (REACT), are supporting the exercise by setting up and facilitating emergency response scenarios on REACT's 15-acre training ground - which provided realistic scenes, such as collapsed facilities, wrecked vehicles and unstable terrain.
"The realism of it, the facilities, the manpower, it gives the exercise the ability to do multiple training exercises without having to secure facilities in a public setting," said Steve Berg, senior instructor for the REACT center. "We can customize all our training to whatever they want."
Patriot 2011 is the National Guard's pinnacle emergency response training exercise each year and focuses on increasing domestic and combat readiness and capabilities of National Guard units along with collaboration between local, state, federal and military agencies in times of crisis.
"I believe it has gone as smooth as any other year," Berg. "Practicing for the 'real deal' - it's why we train."
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