Travis, surrounding community unite to test crisis response

  • Published
  • By Capt. Vanessa Hillman
  • 60th AMW Public Affairs
RUSH RANCH, Calif. --  Smoke billowing in the air, wounded people screaming for help, aircraft parts were strewn across the field and sirens wailed in the distance. This was the scene at Rush Ranch in Solano County Oct. 19 during a joint exercise with the base and emergency responders in the local community.

Exercise "Aircraft Down" simulated the crash of a C-5 Galaxy in order to determine how the base and local community would respond and during the crisis what issues would arise.

More than 350 people, including more than 32 off-base agencies, took over the Rush Ranch off of Highway 12 in the largest exercise with the local community since 1998.
Exercises like this are designed to improve the wing's readiness capability to respond to disasters alongside the local community responders.

Working as a team, this can help each other to minimize death and injury to people and damage to property, according to Mr. Dan Johnson, Exercise Evaluator Team chief.

"It opens lines of communication, provides realistic training and highlights possible problem areas before a real emergency occurs," he said. This is extremely important since we only get one chance to do it right in a real emergency."

Mr. Bob Powell, Solano County Emergency Services Manager, echoed this sentiment. "Communication and coordination are imperative in successfully managing any incident; this drill has opened up lines of communication and established a relationship between civilian emergency responders and our counterparts at Travis Air Force Base."

One of the many benefits from the exercise was being able to learn from the outside agencies what they can each bring to any sort of disaster - from people to equipment, according to Mr. Johnson. "Knowing this can make a difference is a real emergency by cutting down critical decision making and response time," he said.

To make an exercise such as this work it takes a lot of man-hours and dedication.
The morning started well before the 9 a.m. crash for the EET members and the 90 people volunteering to be "victims."

The "victims" showed up at 5:45 a.m. to be shuttled off to Rush Ranch to receive their fake injuries, according to Capt. Michelle Moldrem, 60th Medical Group deputy EET member.

"They were given different injuries and then the moulage artists began to painting them up with burns and blisters," she said. "There was even one with something impaled in their abdomen."

The life-like injuries are an important part of the exercise for the first responders because it hones their triage skills, said Captain Moldrem. "It adds to the realism to the exercise.

If you make the victims look good they take it more seriously."

The team, who spent more than six months planning the exercise, raved about the success of the exercise and the cooperation with the participating agencies.

"There were a few things identified that need fine tuning, but we did meet all of our objectives," said Mr. Powell. "Considering the massive size and the enormous amount of agencies and personnel involved the exercise, it was s huge success."

"The cooperation and participation of the local community response agencies has been great," said Mr. Johnson. "Of course, these exercises simply cannot be done without volunteers and supporting agencies.

"From the role players, who were active duty, reserves, family members, and civilian employees, to the bus and truck drivers, Red Cross volunteers providing food and drinks to all, moulage preparers, helicopter support, and the EET folks who did the set-up and tear down for the disaster scene, each played an important role in making this exercise a tremendous success.

We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the local cities and Solano County and doing this on a regular basis"