Utah Homeland Response Force Shows Value of Command and Control
“The HRF mission is critical given the increased danger that we have responding to domestic terror or disasters.”
Making this observation was LTC Tom Mills of the West Virginia Army National Guard’s Joint Interagency Training and Education Center, who was describing the importance of Homeland Response Forces (HRFs) while observing a training mission conducted by the Utah Army National Guard’s HRF earlier this year.
Established in 2012 as part of a larger reorganization of the Department of Defense’s domestic consequence management enterprise, HRFs serve to increase response efforts in support of local and federal authorities after the occurrence of a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives (CBRNE) incident in the United States.
HRF units are alerted, assembled and deployed within six to 12 hours of an incident occurrence. They conduct command and control, casualty assistance, search and extraction, decontamination, medical triage and stabilization, and fatality search and recovery.
Ten National Guard HRF units are based across the country, regionally oriented to align with the 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regions. Eight of the 10 are hosted by a single State in its particular FEMA region. Those States are California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington. The remaining two HRF assets are distributed across two States per region. In Region I, HRF units are stationed in Massachusetts and Vermont, and Region II elements are shared between New Jersey and New York.
Each HRF is comprised of approximately 580 personnel. Designed to operate either alongside or in advance of other National Guard, local, State and federal first responders, the core of each HRF is a CBRNE response capability that is similar to that found in a CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package (CERF-P).
In addition to its CBRNE competency, HRF units have a substantial command and control capability.
2LT Mark Sagvold is with the Utah National Guard’s HRF, under the 97th Troop Command, and has worked out of his unit’s logistics operations center during past missions as an S4 shift supervisor.
“In a big picture, my job really is to get life-saving supplies and resources to the people in the field that are outside saving lives,” he explained.
2LT Sagvold spoke about how critical it is to coordinate all the various agencies and military components that respond to a CBRNE disaster.
While all members of an HRF team are critical to its function, 2LT Sagvold noted two command and control roles of particular importance. One is the radio transmission operator (RTO).
“The [RTOs] monitor the radios and the communication channels,” he explained. “When there are requests that come through, they’re the ones that take in those requests. They pass it to the proper person that can handle the matter and execute on it. The RTO has to be at the top of their game to be able to respond to each request and push it out to the right individuals.”
The second critical role 2LT Sagvold highlighted is that of the logistic operations non-commissioned officer (NCO).
“The logistic operations NCO is a very important position,” he said. “That person is constantly [receiving] status reports and information on how our life-saving units on the ground are doing with equipment and if they need more. He or she is out there making material projections so they can anticipate what may be needed – whether that’s contamination suits or masks or water.”
HRF Soldiers are required to expect the unexpected. They must accomplish their missions in an environment that is reverberating from the chaos that accompanies most disasters.
The members of the Utah HRF unit had their ability to meet this requirement tested last spring at the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) exercise – a regional disaster training hosted by the Missouri National Guard.
Held at the Boone County Fire Training Center in Columbia, Missouri, the NMSZ exercise simulated a catastrophic earthquake occurring along the New Madrid Faultline that registered 7.7 on the Richter Magnitude Scale.
During the training, Utah’s HRF worked alongside members of the Missouri and Colorado National Guards, the Boone County (Missouri) Fire Protection District, Task Force One and observers from the West Virginia National Guard Joint Interagency Training and Education Center (JITEC).
“The Utah [HRF] is part of this exercise because we’re part of the plan to support Missouri in the event of an earthquake,” said COL Scott Burnhope, commander, 97th Troop Command and HRF. “We’re practicing skills that we need such as command and control, and search and extraction in order to better support the mission. Every time we get a chance to work together with other partners in an event, it’s going to help.”
Sixty-five personnel, out of the Utah HRF’s 583 total members participated in the exercise.
“Being able to respond and train with our partners, like the National Guard, gives us the ability to be stronger in response to what the people and communities [of our State] are going to need,” said Chuck Leake, task force leader, Missouri Task Force One and assistant chief of the Boone County Fire Protection District.
“The Utah HRF, being the FEMA Region 8 HRF, would be the responding team to the State of Missouri in the event of a New Madrid earthquake,” Leake added.
The week-long exercise included missions for several disciplines including operations and logistics, disaster medical assistance, swift water rescue response and search and extraction.
“[During the training], the exercise planners are throwing different things at you,” said 2LT Sagvold. “It really challenges you to think about the geographic area that you’re in. When you’re trying to make transportation plans, you’re constantly poring over maps and looking at different routes. When you make a plan and say ‘Alright, we’re going to go this way,’ the exercise planners come back and say ‘No, all those bridges now are gone.’ All your plans go out the window.”
2LT Sagvold recalled one particular inject – an unexpected directive from exercise planners – that posed a significant challenge.
This particular inject was the simulated breakdown of a refrigerator truck. These trucks are used for the grim, but necessary, work of preserving the remains of deceased disaster victims.
2LT Sagvold and his Soldiers immediately set out looking to find a replacement truck that could be obtained within budget. They also had to find a way to navigate the replacement vehicle through the tangle of closed roads and broken bridges to get it to the proper location. They scoured the internet, calling real businesses until they found one that could supply a refrigerator truck in a one-day turnaround.
“We had to come up with real answers,” 2LT Sagvold explained. “We had to come up with something realistic based upon the way things were. For this particular inject, we were calling around and seeing who had availability to try to play it as real as possible. We didn’t actually book [the truck].”
SFC Nathan Torres, Utah HRF’s full-time planning non-commissioned officer in charge, was initially responsible for the upfront planning to the HRF unit on the ground in Missouri. Once there, he was tasked with keeping the ball rolling smoothly.
“Once we got there on the ground, my job was to work in the plans section and keep track of all the units that were there underneath us,” he said. “We would track the units and what site they were at, and then anticipate how they would be used or if they were going to be needed somewhere else in the next 48 to 72 hours.”
To accurately carry out these duties, SFC Torres and the other Soldiers working in command and control needed to attain up-to-the-minute information from the fielded elements like the HRF’s CERF-P team. That wasn’t always easy.
“You’re asking them for reports and numbers to be sent back to you, but they’re actually on the ground,” he acknowledged. “Their mission to save lives and get people out of the danger zone obviously comes first. That’s always a challenge – to get reports on time when you ask for them [while everything else is going on].”
Though the responsibilities of directly saving citizens on the ground and indirectly saving citizens by reporting back vital information that would be used to ensure a safer environment may have sometimes conflicted with one another, the Soldiers of Utah’s HRF demonstrated a keen understanding of the need for the completion of both tasks.
SSG Jeremy Teela is one of the Utah HRF’s CERF-P Soldiers in the field at the NMSZ exercise.
“I was part of the search and extraction team,” he said. “It’s super important to have someone watching from above because nothing happens without logistics. [For example], how do you feed and house all these rescued people? You’ve got to look at this as a giant organization that you put into [play] during a disaster. Without the logistical piece working like clockwork, nothing moves, nothing happens.”
The lessons learned in Missouri will help the Utah HRF the next time it goes into the field, whether it be for another exercise or a real-world disaster. The value of on-the-ground training the Soldiers received may translate into lives saved in the case of an actual event. Based on feedback from the unit, the Soldiers improved their readiness because of the exercise in Missouri.
“We [went] through and exercised our knowledge and everything we’ve learned. If you’re not constantly on these tools and skills, it’s like anything – it’s a perishable skill. You need to use it constantly to be able to call on it at any moment’s notice.”
BY STAFF WRITER Mathew Liptak
