MCGHEE TYSON AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Tenn. (Aug. 24, 2019) - The 2nd Annual Tennessee Public Safety Interoperability Exercise was held at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base Aug. 22-25.
The exercise was created to improve effectiveness of emergency communications training and networking in Tennessee. 252 individuals from 82 organizations and 12 states registered for the exercise.
The objectives of the event were to help build relationships between agencies, recertify existing communications leaders, facilitate communication leader and communication technician task book completion, provide communications specific training breakouts for better learning, and to increase awareness of communications assets across the state of Tennessee and the local region.
“The whole focus of this is to get many different disciplines and platforms to communicate together, said Maj. Val Deutsch, Tennessee 1st Regiment, TN State Guard operations officer.”
The exercise was broken down into different blocks, including classroom training, held at the I.G. Brown Training and Education Center’s Spruance Hall and McKinley Hall, along with breakout sessions and field training exercises held at various locations around base.
82 federal, state and local agencies participated in TSPSIE, including Tennessee National Guard, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, Knox Co. Emergency Management Agency, TN Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Dept. of Energy, National Park Service, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Red Cross, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“It’s interesting to see all of the different people and organizations come together, and that there’s an actual plan in case a natural disaster happens”, said Staff Sgt. James Badgett, 119th Cyber Operations Squadron.