STUTTGART, Germany -- A tornado tears through Fort Leonard Wood and destroys 150 homes.
Three U.S. Soldiers are killed when their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashes northeast of Mannheim. A gunman opens fire at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 32.
In each incident, the affected Army garrisons had to react at a moment's notice.
"You can never predict when a natural disaster or emergency will occur, but you can be prepared," said William Crane, the director of U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart's Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobility and Security.
"That is why we plan and train for various emergency management scenarios. We - both the garrison staff and our tenant units - must be able to react quickly and correctly when something happens," he said.
Ensuring installation public safety, security and emergency management is one of eight installation readiness goals outlined in the 2010-2017 Installation Management Command Campaign Plan.
According to the campaign plan, or strategy, Army garrisons are tasked to "provide a safe and secure community through preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation programs."
This includes conducting a full scale annual exercise to test a garrison's ability to plan, prepare, respond and recover from natural disasters and/or terrorist attacks.
In order to better prepare for USAG Stuttgart's Stallion Shake force protection exercise to be held in June, 51 garrison staff members and representatives from supporting organizations attended a Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program seminar Dec. 15-16.
The seminar provides the means for garrison commanders to schedule, plan, prepare and report a garrison's training status, lessons learned and corrective action plans.
"HSEEP is an all hazards approach - weather, natural disasters, accidents [and] terrorists," said Ray Graham, the Installation Force Protection Exercise team leader and former garrison commander.
"We encourage garrisons to look at their most dangerous and most likely threats," he said.
The seminar can not only improve how a garrison conducts a training exercise, but also focuses on group dynamics and cross-staff coordination, Graham added. "It's as much team building as it is crisis management."
Trainers led discussions on command and control, incident command, logistics, finance, medical and administrative responses.
The seminar included a table top exercise, with the students responding to a scenario that involved a helicopter crash in the Panzer Housing Area.
"It's a stressful environment," Graham said of the exercise, "but people were saying the right things."
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