Sheppard holds crisis exercises to test base readiness

Photo By Staff Sgt. Pedro Tenorio | Senior Airman Thomas Cruise, 82nd Security Forces Squadron patrolman, and Georgia McCullough, Department of the Air Force officer, rush through the front door at Sheppard Elementary School during an active shooter drill on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, April 20, 2018. To simulate a real active shooter, the first response team would not wait for backup. That would result in teams of only two or sometimes one, to go into the area and neutralize the threat alone. (U.S. Air Force photo Airman 1st Class Pedro Tenorio)  

SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, TX, UNITED STATES

04.25.2018

Story by Airman 1st Class Pedro Tenorio 

82nd Training Wing

Sheppard’s resident heroes were tested on their readiness, response time and overall handling of scenarios that could befall the base at any time during an exercise April 12 and 20.

The Inspector General office on base conducted two exercises, a simulated plane crash and an active shooter situation, to inspect how well facilities and faculty would react and handle an emergency.

The first of these exercises was the Aircraft Collision Mare drill. This exercise exercised the idea of what if during training if one of the training pilots hit one of the planes from the local airport.

The first into the fray were the firemen who rushed in to save as many people as possible, those people being the Airmen in Training who “volunteered” to get bloodied up and pretend to be injured. The medical group then made their debut at the edge of the golf course, safely away from the danger zone as firemen brought people back to be treated.

As the ground troops were taking care of the carnage at the scene the Emergency Operations Center headed by the 82nd Mission Support Group commander made sure everything was being done to make sure the emergency didn’t become a pandemic and to handle it correctly.

The planners and evaluators from IG evaluated the firemen, security forces and medical staff, from on base and off, on their response time, how they chose who to care for first and how well they worked together.

The EOC was evaluated on how well resources were used, how well they communicated and how well they handled the situation.

After the first exercise, the IG Plans, Programs & Exercises section decided to hold another exercise. This time a small contained incident; a school shooting.The school was emptied before the exercise could begin and the only participants were the teachers, the security forces team, the shooter, Wichita Falls' Swat Team and the IG evaluators.

The security forces team first gave a briefing to the teachers, a lot of do’s and don’ts and how their intuition would play into helping kids run or hide.

Once the briefing was over, the simulated shooting began. The teachers returned to their classrooms and at a random time, the shooter started his assault.

The school was evaluated on how well they hid, barricaded or escaped and how well the security forces team swept through the building to neutralize the target.

• Date Taken: 04.25.2018
• Date Posted: 04.30.2018 15:46
• Story ID: 275098
• Location: SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, TX, US