{"id":447778,"date":"2025-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=447778"},"modified":"2025-05-15T17:00:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T17:00:36","slug":"fort-cavazos-conducts-annual-full-scale-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=447778","title":{"rendered":"Fort Cavazos conducts annual full-scale exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n From left, Sharon Moton, a registered nurse with the Women\u2019s Health Center, Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, assists a victim role player onto a bed while Sgt. Paige Salinas, a Women\u2019s Health Center noncommissioned officer, CRDAMC, observes during the installation\u2019s full-scale exercise May 6, 2025, at CRDAMC on Fort Cavazos, Texas.
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FORT CAVAZOS, Texas \u2014 <\/strong>Fort Cavazos officials conducted a full-scale exercise May 6 on the installation, practicing a response to a train derailment at the railhead behind Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is part of our multiyear training exercise plan as a contingency to make sure that we\u2019re ready and prepared in case of any kind of incident or unexpected event,\u201d said Juan Nava, chief of plans and operations, Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security. \u201cMany unexpected events have happened on this installation before, so we\u2019re just maintaining our readiness to be able to respond and react.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exercise posed multiple casualties, some of them at CRDAMC, where the hospital simulated a triage response with role players portraying victims being triaged and moved for treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur initial concern is making sure that we are receiving and treating casualties,\u201d said Col. Joseph Yancey, chief medical officer, CRDAMC, and hospital incident commander for the exercise. \u201cOur emergency room has a whole drill about how we set up and triage those casualties when we have more than we can handle, line in a normal fashion. So that starts without us doing any coordination first because they\u2019ve already drilled that, and they drill that all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharon Moton, a registered nurse, Women\u2019s Health Center, CRDAMC, took the initial assessment of the victim role players, presenting them to the physician and watching their conditions in case of decompensation.<\/p>\n

She stressed the importance of maintaining readiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be ready at all times because emergencies do come in,\u201d Moton said. \u201cWe have had previous emergencies here on the base with two previous shootings, and we also have had incidents where we have stood up the EOC (emergency operation center). However, the casualties (that did come in) \u2026 we were able to care for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do is then we make sure that we are set up to make sure those casualties are received here,\u201d Yancey explained. \u201cWhere do they go from there? Are we able to keep them here? Do we need support from civilian partners in the community? What other resources do we need? And for that matter, an incident like what happened notionally today, we have to be concerned about the safety of the building itself. So there\u2019s a lot of things that we talk about and drill through about how we would handle our own internal movement or internal evacuation, potentially, of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much communication and coordination goes on within the hospital itself, between administration, hospital command, pharmacy, nurses, physicians and others to assist victims and ensure treatment, Moton said.<\/p>\n

Yancey noted outside coordination is just as vital, saying linking emergency managers with III Armored Corps, other units and community partners assists in numerous ways, such as informing the public of altered hospital operations and patient transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this (train derailment) had really happened and we were in a real-world (situation), we would have shut down a variety of our elective operations,\u201d Yancey said. \u201cBut we need help to be able to get that word out. And so we rely on our partners to help us with that, as well, among several other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Mark Haliburton, lead observer controller\/trainer, Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security, speaks into a radio during the installation\u2019s full-scale exercise May 6, 2025, in the Emergency Operations Center at III Armored Corps Headquarters on Fort Cavazos, Texas.
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Coordination also took place between on- and off-post agencies, including CRDAMC, DPTMS, Directorate of Emergency Services, area hospitals, Killeen Independent School District and BNSF Railway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe (coordinating organizations) all need to be able to bring in their information together so they can create one common operating picture for the commander so (he or she) can make a decision,\u201d Nava explained. \u201cWe want to make sure (the commander is) provided relevant and timely information so that we can minimize damage, mitigate the hazard and recover and go back to normal operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can\u2019t be done any other way,\u201d said Patrick Brady, general director of hazardous materiel safety, BNSF Railway, about the open communication in the EOC. \u201cWhen you find incidents that don\u2019t go very well, it\u2019s all about communication and coordination. If you don\u2019t have somebody within the EOC that\u2019s helping communicate and coordinate, that\u2019s when mistakes are made and things go south.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a scenario like a train derailment, not only would local partners be necessary for notification, but regional and national partners, as well, including the Department of Transportation, National Transportation Safety Board and Environmental Protection Agency, Brady said.<\/p>\n

This is not Brady\u2019s first full-scale exercise with Fort Cavazos, having participated in one involving a chlorine-related incident scenario approximately 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince that period of time, there has been a lot of training, both in the public and with agencies on incident command and how you do proper incident management,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has changed a lot from six people sitting in a conference room with a whiteboard trying to figure it out. Now we have tools in place. More people are involved, so it has improved substantially and is a better process now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communication and coordination with all partners is critical, said Greta Buccellato,
deputy to the U.S. Army Garrison-Fort Cavazos commander.<\/p>\n

\u201cMajor League Baseball teams and National Football League teams, they don\u2019t play their big games without practicing, right?\u201d she said. \u201cSo while we hope to never play these games, it\u2019s important that we\u2019re ready. In order to be ready, we have to practice and to practice without your key partners, you miss something in the big games. It\u2019s very hard to form impactful relationships on the day of the big game. You need to do it before then.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe value of these types of exercises,\u201d she continued, \u201cis not only establishing the relationships and furthering the relationships over time, but gaining a comfort level that your teammates are going to be there when you need them and that they\u2019re going to come through for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From left, Sharon Moton, a registered nurse with the Women\u2019s Health Center, Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, assists a victim role player onto a bed while Sgt. Paige Salinas, a Women\u2019s Health Center noncommissioned officer, CRDAMC, observes during the installation\u2019s full-scale exercise May 6, 2025, at CRDAMC on Fort Cavazos, Texas. (Photo Credit: U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447780,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=447778"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447783,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447778\/revisions\/447783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/447780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}