FORT HOOD, Texas - Members of the Central Texas Support Facility's Emergency Action Team track accountability of campus personnel in the CTSF Emergency Operations Center during a May 7, 2019, active shooter scenario exercise, part of Fort Hood's ann...
FORT HOOD, Texas - Fort Hood Garrison conducted its annual Full Scale Exercise May 7 - 10, 2019, to simulate how the post and local authorities would respond to emergency situations on the installation. The exercise focused on Emergency Management critical elements of command and control, mass warning and notification, community awareness, activation of local support agreements, execution of notification protocols, and actions of first responders.
The Central Texas Support Facility participated in the FSE by executing an internal active shooter scenario drill and 100% accountability, in order to update and validate Emergency Action Plan procedures, verify CTSF campus personnel mass warning and notification enrollment, verify recall roster accuracy, rehearse implementation of Random Anti-terrorism Measures, and train its personnel on incident response actions.
The active shooter scenario included many layers of response from individual reactions to the threat, campus lockdown procedures, shelter in place, and 100% accountability reporting. CTSF Director, Col. Christopher Ford took an active role during the event as the primary victim, which forced the implementation of the CTSF succession of command. III Corps Emergency Management personnel were also on hand to observe and offer feedback during the exercise. The CTSF Emergency Operations Center stood up to respond to the scenario and coordinated with building fire wardens, CTSF security force, and campus leadership to obtain 100% accountability for more than 350 personnel within 45 minutes.
"This is the first year that I've taken a more active role in planning and execution of our annual emergency management response exercise, and I was more than impressed with the efficiency, professionalism, and response of our workforce and leaders," Ford said.
The exercise will lead to refinement of CTSF's EAP and ensured personnel were trained on emergency response procedures.
"This event helped us capture valuable lessons learned and document best practices to ensure our force protection plans are up to date," said Justin Zadnichek, CTSF's EM Coordinator and Operations Chief. "We will also strive to improve future exercises by integrating with the Fort Hood emergency managers to increase awareness of the III Corps Commander's intent and concept of operations."
Central Technical Support Facility, a major subordinate of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, is the Army's strategic facility for Army Interoperability Certification (AIC) testing and configuration management for all operational Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C4I) systems, applications and hardware before fielding.
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