BUTLERVILLE, Ind. – With an exercise the magnitude of Vibrant Response comes the need for inter-agency communication, team/unit cohesion and quick reaction time. Vibrant Response, an exercise that simulates a terrorist nuclear attack in the United States, implements those three tenets in order to accomplish the mission at hand – working together to help save lives.
More than 4,000 military and civilian participants converged on Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center, Muscatatuck Urban Training Center and its surrounding communities Nov. 5 - 12 to participate in a training exercise that would put their capabilities to the test.
Air Force Gen. Victor E. “Gene” Renuart Jr., the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, explained how when attacks of this nature surpass the capability of first responders, there are people in place who are trained specifically for such an occasion.
“When an event like this occurs,” he said, “absolutely the first people on the scene are going to be the local first responders…”
“But as you could imagine, an event like a nuclear detonation will rapidly grow beyond the capacity of certainly the local first responders and maybe state and potentially national responders,” he said. “And so what we’ve tried to approximate in this scenario is that those first responders have arrived, they have conducted those initial searches, and we’ve asked for the civil support teams from within the state to come and assess for chemical, biological and nuclear conditions and help us understand what would be required to respond to this.”
On Friday and Saturday that assessment team was the Ohio Chemical Enhanced Force Protection Package, or Ohio CERFP, chemical and engineering Soldiers and Air Force medics pulled together from the Ohio Army and Air National Guard.
Army Maj. David Mason, Ohio CERFP commander, said the benefit of having the team is that it is set up to be on stand-by alert.
“When looking at a major incident, your initial first responders can only do so much in a certain time frame,” he said. “When the FEMA assistance comes in [there can be] a lapse in that response. We’re here to fill in the gap. We have the ability to arrive on site within 12 hours of call up.”
The team got their trial-by-fire Saturday during the second simulated nuclear attack on a city. The once peaceful neighborhood soon erupted like a volcano: smoke spewed from building windows, fire engulfed wrecked cars and trucks and dazed citizens – bloodied and battered – poured into the streets shouting for medical attention. Some could not be consoled.
“Where is my daughter?” a woman cried. “I’m not leaving without my daughter!”
Bloodcurdling screams and thunderous pounding erupted from the city jail as “prisoners” were determined to not be left behind. Feeling angry and forgotten, they rattled and shook their jail cell bars yelling for someone to help them.
“Why isn’t anyone coming?” they cried to one another.
But someone was coming. Outside, the Ohio CERFP members were performing land surveys to identify the damage, erecting triage centers and setting up decontamination sites. The “decon team” then moved out to rescue the people in need.
Army Cpl. Jaime Ramirez, a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear explosives specialist with the 379th Chemical Company headquartered in Chicago said the scenario was as real as it gets.
“It was exciting the second we got in the gate,” he said. “The simulated town and wreckage everywhere, role players with simulated injuries… It seems really well thought out.”
In fact, every burning car, every trash heap and rubble pile was put in place so people who come to train at Muscatatuck are immersed in the most realistic scenario possible.
Lt. Gen. Tom Turner, commander of U.S. Army North and the Vibrant Response director, describes Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck as second to none.
“This should be a national treasure,” Turner said. “I really think it is a perfect place to do the integration of inter-agency training. It is an incredible piece of terrain,” he said, adding that Muscatatuck provides “great opportunities and great realism.”
“You can see over the next few days this is going to be a very realistic battlefield and [the Indiana National Guard] has really done a heck of a lot to facilitate it so I can’t thank them enough,” he said.
Turner said training in an exercise such as Vibrant Response helps the participants work through any kinks that would otherwise manifest at an inopportune time.
“When you show up at an incident of this magnitude, that is not the time to start meeting the players that are going to be involved in this kind of effort,” Turner said.
“Everyone will get training in their own task that they perform but they’ll also go away with a much better understanding of how the pieces fit together, how federal, local and state folks get integrated to conduct this mission,” he said.
The same nuclear attack was carried out on Monday, this time with Marine Corps responders from the Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force, or CBIRF, out of Indian Head, Md.
Brig. Gen. Clif Tooley, commander of the Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck Center for Complex Operations, said that he was honored to support U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Army North in their execution of this year’s exercise, Vibrant Response.
“The size and scope of this event will showcase our unique capability to support large-scale live training of Department of Defense forces missioned to provide support to civil authorities in consequence management,” Tooley said. “The Joint-Interagency-intergovernmental team participating in this experience will undoubtedly leave better prepared to perform their mission should they be called upon to do so.”