Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Leticia Samuels | Soldiers from the 230th Brigade Support Battalion work with their counterparts in the...... read more read more
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NEW LONDON, N.C. - Soldiers from the 230th Brigade Support Battalion work with their counterparts in the North Carolina Air Guard in staging, loading and distributing important supplies needed for citizens during simulated disaster March 8, 2015, in New London, North Carolina.
Vigilant Guard is a training exercise with various simulations and scenarios used to test the readiness of Soldiers in the event of a natural disaster.
“We are using today as an opportunity to do some training and doing battle drill rehearsals to make sure when we start receiving injects tomorrow, everybody is tracking,” said Lt. Col. Keith Rapp, 230th BSB commander.
Within 24 hours the BSB has deployed to Stanley County simulating being alerted for a State Active Duty mission. The BSB works with Emergency Management to support logistics operations within the Vigilant Guard exercise.
Once boots touch ground, the battalion filters through the Joint Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration (JRSOI), a system used by first responders to track all personnel and resources being utilized before, during, and after a natural disaster enabling EM to send assets anywhere they are needed across the state of N.C.
The soldiers are then briefed about the EM process and how they will receive their tasks and where they will be going.
“We start off with a brief overview of the EM process, to the soldiers so they understand how they are going to receive taskings, who they are going to receive taskings from, who their boss is, who their boss isn’t” said Rapp.
Aaron Deese, EM Warehouse Manager, Senior Master Sgt.
Norbert Reid, Air Guard Noncommissioned officer in charge, and Rapp meet and discuss what each branch is capable of, their specific duties, and elements that may cause problems during this operation.
“We go into a walkthrough of the overall facility, and say okay lets picture this after four days of rain, and maybe its still raining right now, and this is what we have to work with” said Rapp.
While vehicles are being prepared and staged, the Air Guard side of the house is busy at work taking in orders from EM. Supplies and equipment needed by first responders in counties of the western region send a list to EM and they store the list in their system, which filters to the Badin Warehouse.
“From each incident we will get requests from various counties from NCEM for water, Meals Ready to Eat, tarps, batteries, chainsaws, anything of that nature to assist them” said Reid.
Once the orders are received, the warehouse staff starts stocking, and doing an inventory, and upon request, the perspective orders are put together and staged to be loaded. The orders are then loaded on to the transportation vehicles and could be delivered as far as 100 miles away from this EM location.
“Coordination with the transportation side of it, to make sure we get the right loads, the communication side of it, to make sure that everyone is connecting with each other so that it will be a smooth flow” said Reid, “since this is our first time working with an Army Guard, its been some what of a challenge to understand how you guys do transportation.”
The program provides an opportunity for State National Guard Headquarters, State Joint Tasks Forces, North Carolina Emergency Management, and County Civilian partners to improve communication and operational relationships in a domestic
Operations environment.
“I need to be able to develop a relationship with them and say hey what are you guys bringing to this fight, well this is what we can do and make that mesh because at the end of the day everybody is trying to obtain the same goal which is to support the citizens of N.C.” said Rapp.
| Date Taken: | 03.08.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 03.10.2015 09:36 |
| Story ID: | 156498 |
| Location: | NC, US |
| Web Views: | 108 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, NC Guard remain vigilant supplying partners during disasters, by SFC Leticia Samuels, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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