WIESBADEN, Germany -- Safety efforts across Europe orchestrated battle preparations to combat accidents, injuries and more at the first Exercise Anakonda 2016 Safety Summit.
For two days, a team of over 30 participants led by the U.S. Army Europe Safety Office connected safety efforts from multiple U.S. Forces Command units, U.S. Army National Guard, U.S. Army Reserve, U.S. Army Europe units and partner nations.
"Commanders are task oriented and focused on training and their mission. While they can focus on that, we safety officers can focus on the safety mission, and fight the safety fight," said Eric Washington, USAREUR Safety Tactical Safety Program manager. "The Soldier is our most precious resource and we need to do everything we can to ensure they are not hurt, injured or damage any military or Polish property."
Washington is the USAREUR Tactical Operations Center safety officer for Exercise Anakonda 2016 (AN16), a Polish national exercise that seeks to train, exercise and integrate Polish national command and force structures into an allied, joint, multinational environment.
"This is the first time USAREUR has done something of this magnitude," Washington said. "There are a lot of moving parts, for instance, conducting airborne operations, combined arms live fire operations, convoy operations, taking equipment off of ships, rail loading operations, line haul operations, mass casualty operations, and we also have river crossings and long distance convoys."
The exercise will involve more than 25,000 participants from 24 nations, including Albania, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Accident prevention in an exercise of this size involves a wide range of planning focuses, to include risk management, tactical safety, aviation safety, securing and driving hazardous materials properly, environmental damage and how to deal with, ammunition and explosives, radiation safety, communications equipment, chemical equipment and laser safety.
"There is absolutely no reason for any Soldier to get killed or hurt during a training event," said Washington. "Along with the junior leaders, senior leaders and the NCO support channel, we (safety officers) are the first line of defense to protect Soldiers from injury, death or property damage."
According to Washington, safety practices models the right behavior to our allied partners.
"They see us as the subject matter experts, as one of the most mature and best armies in the world, so the best thing we can do is prevent accidents, not have injuries, and model the right thing… wearing our seat belts, enforcing speed limits, safety standards, modeling the right safety culture," he said.
"Any time you get safety personnel together, we have the same focus, so it was well worth the time we put into it," Washington said of the summit. "With all this planning, it's going to be a successful and safe exercise."
------------------
About Us: U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned in its 51-country area of responsibility to advance American strategic interests in Europe and Eurasia. The relationships built during the more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events, held in more than 40 countries each year, lead directly to support for multinational contingency operations around the world, strengthen regional partnerships and enhance global security.
Social Sharing