Emergency management support team trains for everything Published Aug. 16, 2011 By Senior Airman Jami K. Lancette 434th ARW Public Affairs GRISSOM AIR RESERVE BASE, Ind. -- In an emergency situation all hands are needed on deck to control a situation, save lives and prevent damage. Recent training conducted by the 434th Civil Engineer Squadron was aimed at training even more people to help during a crisis as eight Grissom personnel prepared themselves to be emergency management readiness support team members. "Some of the things we do require more than one person on a shift; if we go into a 24-hour-a- day operation there needs to be at least one of us (Emergency Managers) on each shift, so that means were going to have to rely on some additional help," said Robert L. Wydock, Jr., Grissom deputy base emergency manager. "I can train (them) to do map work, they can plot plumes, and they can be the standby person with the incident commander relaying information back." The emergency management readiness support team members must go through 14 hours of initial training followed by annual training conducted during base-wide exercises. The trainees receive hands-on instruction with map reading, grid coordinates, GPS capabilities, range finders, compass reading and other hands-on exercises that encompass what they've learned in class. "There are all kinds of things that they can do that wouldn't require anything more than generalized training," said Wydock. "In between the computer based training that we assign them and some of the hands-on training that we're doing, we're hoping that will give them the basic skills needed for them to be able to help out in case of an emergency. "Every emergency is different so you can't really say what we're going to need them for at any given time," he added. "So we're trying to teach them general skills so that any individual particular skill at the time can be just-in-time training." Ultimately, if an emergency would happen, this team of emergency response support professionals would get things going by employing the skills and training that they've acquired to help resolve the situation. "We would start things off in the (emergency operations center), and we'd activate these guys, four of them would go on the second shift, and four of them would come to our shift, the day shift," said Wydock. "Those four could run the (nuclear biological and chemical) cell that's in the EOC, which would be plume modeling and things like that. "We could send one of them out with the incident commander or liaison," he added. "There are several different things that they could be doing; pretty much anything we'd be doing that doesn't involve the technical expertise." So if an emergency were to occur, the readiness support team could be activated as trained to get the incident under control. "For (them) it's considered an additional duty, but when they become activated this becomes their primary job they continue to do until the situation is over and are released," said Wydock. The 434th CES is part of the 434th Air Refueling Wing, the largest KC-135 Stratotanker in the Air Force Reserve Command. Stay connected with the 434th ARW on Twitter and Facebook.
