AMC Airmen ready to respond: Students receive emergency response training through AMC Incident Management Course

  • Published
  • By Airman Shen-Chia Chu
  • 436th AW Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  The phone rings and people across the base brace, since it's not just any phone, it's the 'crash phone.' Is this an accident, an incident or just one of the daily tests?

One thing for sure is that if it's the real thing, people need to be prepared, and Team Dover Airmen are prepared more than ever for that phone call after attending the United States Air Force Incident Management Course Dec. 4 through 7 here.

Airmen from Air Mobility Command bases such as Charleston, S.C., Pope, N.C., McChord, Wash., and McConnell, Kan., also attended this four-day class, presented by Neil Krosner, who has been teaching this course for approximately 13 years from the Ira C. Eaker College for Professional Development from Maxwell Air Force Base, Al.

"Accidents and incidents may happen at any given time, so it's important to learn how to handle them in the proper manner," said Mr. Krosner.

The course included briefings and demonstrations from various organizations and agencies teaching media relations, legal aspects, engineering, search and recovery, and new technologies being utilized in the career fields to prepare selected Air Force officers and civilians for incident commander duties.

"This is one of the few courses in the Air Force that has NCOs, civilians and officers training together and that is what we should be doing since we'll be responding together," said Mr. Krosner. "We also take all aspects of what each base does and add it onto the course. What we see at Dover may help make it safer or more efficient for other installations during their emergency operations."

The training provided emergency and contingency response training to disaster response force representatives, installation fire officials, command inspection team chiefs, and wing and base exercise evaluation team chiefs.

"This class allows our incident commanders and emergency operation directors time to think through how they would respond to an emergency even before the incident happens," said Lt. Col. Sherry Brown, 436th Civil Engineer Squadron commander who attended the class. "This training helps to formulate solutions for real-life emergencies in advance because a matter of minutes can mean the difference between life and death."

Training involved everyone from firefighters to local emergency responders and included problem solving and exercises associated with situation assessment, on-scene commander duties, communications, special resources, planning, public affairs and logistic support.

"Training is the default option - you've done it before and practiced it, and all of a sudden, it falls into place," said Master Sgt. James Siegman, 436th CES assistant fire chief. "Without this training, there's nothing to fall back on when the real thing happens.
The first thing that comes into mind is what have you done before? Now you've got some sense of experience to rely on to act immediately."

Sergeant Siegman sees this training as essential to the mission, especially after being involved with the C-5 mishap April 3, 2006.

"Training comes right down to action - when the time comes to act, there's no more thinking, the actions just take place and things get taken care of," he said.

Many who attended this course don't work together on a daily basis or on the same base, but feel confident that when an incident happens they will have an understanding of how each part works on-scene.

"This was a great opportunity for us to work together and be successful, sharing our knowledge with one another so someone sees what I would do versus public affairs, mortuary affairs or medics do on-scene," said Sergeant Siegman.

One Airman believes his perspective may be different from most students who attended the class because his job is preparing his senior leadership for ORIs in working on how to deal with emergency situations.

"I believe this is an extremely valuable course because as an evaluator, it makes me better to arm my leadership and first responders. We can all take this training back to our units," said Maj. Mike Rambo, 22nd Air Refueling Wing exercise and evaluation team chief for McConnell AFB, Kan. "Many people may be tasked with something they're not normally tasked with, and now they can hone their skills and work with other agencies around the base during certain incidents. We need to know what's available and best to utilize in unfortunate circumstances when we actually have to deal with one in the real world."