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| PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (September 14, 2016) – Firefighters and 48th CST members suit up to seach the area for the simulated threat during Operation Stone Crab at the Charlotte Sports Park. |
09.14.2016
Story by Staff Sgt. Christopher Milbrodt
Florida National Guard Public Affairs Office
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (September 14, 2016) – Time spent at a baseball stadium is usually full of laughter, cheers, the smell of the concessions and the sound of America’s favorite pastime being played. However, as people move about the stadium enjoying the game, everything can change in an instant. Once cheering fans can end up gasping for air and scrambling about the stadium trying to make sense of what happened.
Recently, smoke and calls for help filled the air as a horde of volunteers from the local community and students from Charlotte Technical College rushed towards the firefighters who were the first to arrive on the scene. In the midst of the chaos, firefighters worked to safely get the people away from the stadium and begin medical assessments while at the same time addressing the cause for alarm.
The situation was designed as a training exercise between law enforcement and firefighters from all over the state, as well as members of the Florida National Guard, to simulate a Weapons of Mass Destruction attack. Exercise officials took more than four months to plan every detail to make the training as realistic as possible.
“As a Civil Support Team, one of our main missions is to integrate with the first responding agencies,” said Army Capt. Christopher Atherton, 48th CST Operations Officer. “The reason we conduct exercises like this is to facilitate the coordination between the Florida National Guard and our local responders should an event like this occur.”
As the exercise progressed, more agencies were called in to deal with the problem presented while evaluators monitored the performance of the participants.
“Today’s event was designed to exceed the capabilities of the local resources and require them to reach out to mutual aid resources for help,” said Jason Fair, Deputy Chief for Charlotte County Fire and Emergency Medical Services. “With it being a WMD attack, its right up the alley of the National Guard’s Civil Support Teams.”
With terrorist events like this becoming commonplace throughout the world, these exercises make sure our responders are ready for anything.
“One of the key focuses of this exercise is to ensure the civilians of Florida are safe and should a complex coordinated attack happen, all the responders know each other by their first names and have worked with each other before,” said Atherton. “We stand ready and prepared should something like this ever occur.”
