STARK, Fla. – From May 16-20, multiple agencies came together for the Florida Emergency Mortuary Operations Response System (FEMORS) and Florida Air National Guard (FANG) Hurricane Exercise (HURREX) fiscal year 16 drill. HURREX 16 brought together FEMORS, Florida’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Enhanced Response Force Package (CERFP), District Medical Examiner offices, and members of the Florida Army National Guard’s 254th Transportation Company.
“This is the first of its kind, this integration with the FEMORS team,” said Maj. Robert Ard, Medical Plans and Operations Officer for the Florida CERFP and facilitator for the HURREX. “It’s never been done across the country as of yet. We are looking to ensure that we meld all of our tactics and training so that when a real event occurs we can do this seamlessly.”
With over a year in planning and approximately 130 people on the event site, HURREX 16 successfully exercised emergency response plans, policies and procedures as they pertain to fatality management response. The exercise scenario involved a Category 3 hurricane making landfall, a terrorist bombing of a nuclear power plant, and the resulting radiation from the attack simultaneously.
Due to the emphasis of completely simulating a disaster, multiple staging areas and organizations were erected outside of the search and recovery location. This included all five operational elements of fatality management response including: Command and Control, Disaster Site Recovery Center, Disaster Portable Morgue Unit, Victim Identification Center, and the Morgue Identification Center.
HURREX 16 differed from other similar exercises in that it was the first to employ the use of both eight real severed human limbs and the bodies of four recently deceased people. Both the limbs and cadavers had been donated for use in medical science and military training purposes. Upon completion of the exercise, all human remains were moved to the University of Florida for continued use in a classroom environment.
“Using cadavers brings us one step prior to having a real event,” said Ard. “It actually gives the Airmen the opportunity to interact with a deceased human. These cadavers donated themselves to science, to help us become better with what we do, and with this it has brought allot of realism to the training event.”
The CERFP Fatality Search and Recovery Team (FSRT) role was accomplished by 125th Fighter Wing Force Support Squadron (FSS) members. FSS’s normal duties at home station include food preparation, conducting physical training testing, and managing the lodging program; however, during disasters their responsibilities change drastically.
Out of the eight FSS members who comprised the FSRT for the exercise, only one had previous experience handling human remains.
“To actually see human remains and have some of that shock wear off for our team members I thought was very important,” said Tech. Sgt. Ethan Barnas, who served as the FSRT Alpha Team leader during the exercise but is normally the dining facility manager. “We did have some team members who had difficulty with the cadavers and those issues would not have arisen if we had been using the rescue dummies.”
Both the coordination between agencies participating in the event and the expedience of accomplishing tasks quickly improved throughout the exercise.
“We had some hiccups at the beginning,” said Tech. Sgt. Cristopher Hancock who was an observer, scenario controller and safety official for the simulated disaster area. “It went from a slow crawl to at the end going above and beyond what we normally do.”
Brig. Gen. James Eifert, Assistant Adjutant General-Air for the Florida Air National Guard, agreed that the exercise provided valuable experience for those who participated.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to integrate and train with our federal and state partners to further how we respond to potentially the worst day in Florida,” Eifert said. “We’re breaking new ground for how an FSRT would respond to a natural or manmade disaster and be able to take care of the citizens of Florida in the best manner possible.”