Guard units training to respond to natural disaster
By MIKE AVERILL World Staff Writer on Sep 18, 2013, at 3:52 PM
National Guard members walk through "Gruber City" during a disaster drill at Camp Gruber Wednesday in Braggs. The exercise simulated a radioactive explosion in a populated area. MATT BARNARD/Tulsa World
State
For more than a generation, this rural community has been haunted by a mystery: What happened to a group of teens who disappeared in the early 1970s after heading to a high school football game?
Jimmy Nazario Jr. was scheduled for trial on a second-degree murder charge in October — but defense attorney Kenneth Rhoads was killed in a motorcycle accident in July.
BRAGGS — Members of the Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and New Mexico National Guard along with a number of civilian agencies are at Camp Gruber working together on a multisite training exercise called “Joint Eagle.”
The exercise is designed to create an environment in which Army and Air National Guard units work together with civilian agencies in response to a natural disaster.
“A lot of times the civilian sector is able to handle a disaster when they come on but some disasters will hit and they can’t, it’s too large in size and exceeds the capabilities they’ve got or the timing of the response, we can sometimes come faster,” said Maj. Heather Arndt, exercise coordinator. “For example, looking at the Moore tornado we were able to provide a lot of people very fast to compliment the law enforcement aspect of keeping the area secure.”
This type of training exercise allows military and law enforcement agencies to get used to working together and help them learn their differences in communication.
“It’s important, since we know we can be activated together in a domestic situation that we work on the training,” Arndt said. “We found out during the Moore tornado that it’s vital that we understand each other.”
Earlier in the week the units focused on tornado response with soldiers working on search and rescue, water support and other aspects of immediate tornado support.
By Wednesday the focus had shift to responding to a terrorist chemical attack or other chemical incident such as train derailment.
Soldiers set up decontamination and medical triage stations and treated nearly 150 “role players” who had various degrees of injuries and chemical burns, many who were wailing and bordering on being unruly in their demands for help.
During the event Capt. Brett Bailey with the Tulsa Police Department served as incident commander of the response, working with the Texas National Guard Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear, and Explosive Enhanced Response Force Package.
“It’s been going very well. Anytime you get this many role players you’re obviously going to have some snafus with communication and everything but that’s why we’re doing this, to be able to identify those in a training situation so you’re less likely to experience them in the real world,” Bailey said.
State
For more than a generation, this rural community has been haunted by a mystery: What happened to a group of teens who disappeared in the early 1970s after heading to a high school football game?
Jimmy Nazario Jr. was scheduled for trial on a second-degree murder charge in October — but defense attorney Kenneth Rhoads was killed in a motorcycle accident in July.
