The Soldiers and Airmen are part of a regional disaster response force trained to respond to a Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear (CBRN) incident. The complete force includes some 600 personnel and is known as a National Guard Homeland Response Force (HRF).The Western New York elements include the 2nd Squadron, 101st Cavalry headquarters as the command element of the CBRN response task force with members of Company A, 427th Brigade Special Troops Battalion conducting search and extraction and Company D, 427th Brigade Support Battalion as the decontamination element. More than a dozen Airmen of the 107th Airlift Wing also support the HRF with medical or communications personnel.
News media interested in visiting the unit training at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst may travel to the Naval Air Engineering Center, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Commercial Gate, Lakehurst-Whitesville Rd. (CR 547), Lakehurst, N.J. on Friday, April 17 at 10 a.m. Media MUST registered for this event by 3:30 pm Wednesday, April 15 by calling the New Jersey National Guard Public Affairs Office at 609-530-6950 or email: kryn.westhoven@dmava.nj.gov.
The Homeland Response Force (HRF) is one of 10 established by the Department of Defense to serve as a CBRN response force.
The Homeland Response Force consists of about 600 Soldiers and Airmen of the National Guard with expertise in search and extraction of disaster victims, incident site security, decontamination, medical treatment and command and control of the mission.
The Soldiers and Airmen will train at a simulated disaster site to search for and extract victims of a notional incident while wearing hazardous materials suits, decontaminate those victims if needed, and conduct basic medical triage to assist first responders and health officials.
The major units that comprise the HRF include:
• The 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team Headquarters, based in Syracuse, N.Y., which provides more than 190 Soldiers for overall command and control of the force.
• The 2nd Squadron, 101st Cavalry Headquarters, based in Niagara Falls, N.Y., providing about 16 Soldiers to command the CBRN response elements at the incident site.
• About 50 Engineers of Company A, 427th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, located in Lockport, N.Y., who train for the extraction and evacuation of casualties.
• Company D, 427th Brigade Support Battalion, based in Buffalo, N.Y., whose 75 Soldiers operate the decontamination element.
• The air wings of the New York Air National Guard, including Niagara Falls' 107th Airlift Wing and the Scotia-based 109th Airlift Wing, the 105th Airlift Wing in Newburgh and 106th RescueWing from Westhampton Beach on Long Island contribute more than 50 medical personnel for the triage and transfer of casualties for civilian medical treatment.
• Security personnel from the New Jersey National Guard include some 200 members of the 2nd Battalion, 113th Infantry from Riverdale, N.J. as the HRF CBRN Assistance and Support Element.
Additional training support in the exercise scenario will be provided by some 44 members the National Guard Civil Support Teams (CST) from New Jersey's 21st CST and New York's 2nd CST. Each element will conduct training in its unique role to rapidly assess and identify CBRN hazards at an incident site for first responders.
The HRF provides governors with a military element capable of augmenting civilian first responders for patient extraction and decontamination during a CBRN incident.
Also participating in the training exercise this week will be members of the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management and New Jersey State Police Task Force 1, the urban search andrescue team with specialized training in CBRN or hazardous material events.
The 10 HRFs align with each Federal Emergency Management Agency region to allow for closer and more familiar contact with civilian responders. The National Guard forces also provide a greater responsiveness to local authorities due to their closer geographical locations.
The Region 2 Homeland Response Force directly supports FEMA region two states and territories of New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The team trains under Defense Department guidelines to respond to a request by civil authorities after a CBRN hazardous materials incident requiring assistance from federal military resources. The force is primarily equipped to respond via ground transport to an incident site, but is capable of air transportation to support all the states or territories in FEMA Region II responding to a CBRN event.
The core of each HRF is a CBRN capability similar to that found in the National Guard's existing CBRN Enhanced Response Force Packages, augmented with additional command and control and security capability. This allows for the force to expand as an incident may require.
At the same time, these National Guard forces continue to train on their traditional military skill sets to be ready to support overseas contingency operations.
The HRF is designed to foster increased dialogue between regional first responders and other state and federal response agencies. The HRF plays an important role at the regional level in helping develop and build regional plans and in working with emergency managers to build a cohesive government response to CBRN incidents at the regional level.
Imagery of unit training, including the 2014 validation exercise can be found at the New York National Guard Flickr site at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyng/sets/72157644419973192/with/14080385802/. Current unit training photographs will be uploaded during the course of training this week between Thursday and Saturday at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyng.
