An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Feature Stories

NEWS | Oct. 7, 2018

Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!

By Capt. Melanie Nelson U.S. Army Central

More than 20 different elements participated in the Area Support Group-Kuwait Mass Casualty Training Exercise at Camps Arifjan and Buehring, Kuwait, September 26, 2018.

"As the emergency manager, I oversee the emergency management program at Camp Arifjan to include the ability to respond to any incident and accident that may occur," said U.S. Army Capt. Austin Hamilton, Emergency Manager for Area Support Group Kuwait. "We manage the program to ensure that any Soldiers who happen to be here on camp are safe in the event of any emergencies.”

As provost marshal for Area Support Group-Kuwait, U.S. Army Capt. Schcola Chambers, was one of the first responders on the scene at one of the multiple incident sites.

When asked about the responsibilities of being the incident commander Chambers said, "like a puzzle, visualizing the bigger picture helps in placing the individual pieces of emergency management together."

Chambers, with help from the 984th Military Police Company, analyzed the situation first, to decide what was needed from all emergency management entities to aid any casualties at the incident site.

Area Support Group-Kuwait Headquarters Company Soldiers acted as role players for the training exercise. The 452nd Combat Support Hospital was tasked with attending to the wounded.

U.S. Army Capt. Britta Kelven, the Mass Casualty Officer in Charge said, “it feels good.”

Kelven’s teams were able to train all four categories of triage simultaneously throughout different areas of the combat support hospital. In typical field hospital environments, training space is limited which eliminates the opportunity to exercise all hospital specialty areas at the same time.

Observing the smooth operations at the combat support hospital were military members of the Kuwait Ministry of Defense North Medical Military Complex. Their medical team watched ambulances report to the hospital and sweep patients into various areas of the facility for the specialized treatment they needed; ranging from emergency medical treatment to physical therapy.

Also unique to this fourth quarter exercise, were players like unit ministry teams and mortuary affairs. U.S. Army Chaplain (Maj.) Cecil Corneille, Area Support Group – Kuwait Senior Catholic priest, and the ministry team, comforted role-playing causalities throughout the exercise. In the scenarios, not every Soldier made it out alive. This allowed both teams to train on their response to the bereaved and respectful care for the fallen.

Though the exercise has indexed, the training continues in the days to come.

"We still have to receive input from the outside organizations that assisted us today,” said Hamilton. “We will be conducting an after action review later on this week and we're certainly going to take all those inputs and use them to better ourselves and better our capabilities to respond to these emergencies."