Valley included in National Guard’s statewide training exercise

WASILLA — National Guard Civil Support Team units from twelve different states recently participated in a statewide training effort at various training locations in Anchorage, Seward, and the Mat-Su Valley.

National Guard teams executed Exercise ORCA 2021 along with partnering local, state, and federal agencies and organizations with approximately 250 people involved from May 17 through May 20, according to a recent press release.

The ORCA training program was created to give participants the opportunity to respond to hazardous materials incidents, test interoperability between the agencies, increase working relationships, and practice requests for assistance methods.

“We’re conducting an all-hazards, multi-CST, multi-agency exercise,” Col. Anthony Mortrud, commander of the 103rd Civil Support Team, Alaska National Guard stated in the press release. “This particular exercise is the largest chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear exercise held in Alaska.”

According to the press release, this year’s exercise saw unprecedented National Guard CST participation numbers. 2021 participants included units from California, Connecticut, Colorado, Idaho, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, Alaska’s 103rd CST, as well as the 10th Homeland Response Force from Washington and the 8th CBRN Enhanced Response Force-Package from Colorado.

The 196th Infantry Brigade, U.S. Army Pacific oversaw the overall planning and execution of Exercise ORCA 2021. The Alaska National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 207th Aviation Regiment, 176th Civil Engineer Squadron’s Emergency Management section, Joint Operations Center, and Joint Staff Operations Section participated this year.

The Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Matanuska-Susitna Emergency Management, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Major Marine Tours, Alaska Railroad, Anchorage Fire Department, Alaska State Emergency Operations Center, University of Alaska-Anchorage, Port of Seward, and the Port of Alaska-Anchorage were also credited in the press release as additional Alaskan entities involved during the training exercise.

“Those are key relationships that need to be developed during an exercise… because you don’t want to do that during a real-world event. You have to work all of those bugs out before something happens, and that interagency play helps by developing tactics, training, and procedures between us and our civilian counterparts,” Mortrud stated in the press release.

National Guard CST units deploy rapidly to assist a local incident commander in determining the nature and extent of a weapon’s mass destruction attack or incident, provide expert technical advice on CBRN response operations, and help identify and support the arrival of follow on state and federal military response assets.

This year’s ORCA participants were faced with a number of challenges to work through. This included identifying illicit and dangerous substances, responding to simulated attacks and disasters, and coordinating with participating agencies to work through each scenario.

In addition to working through all-hazard events during the exercise, another objective of the exercise was testing out the capabilities of the National Guard CBRN Enterprise Response Information Management System (NG-CIMS), a mission management and communications platform, which is used in real-world incidents and events, including the 59th presidential inauguration this year, by multiple agencies involved in a scenario for synchronized interoperability.

The 2021 exercise was the largest deployment of NG-CIMS to date. It was also the first time the system was used for multiple, simultaneous incidents, and it was accomplished on a large scale at three geographically separated locations.

“They have a train derailment, a uranium dirty bomb, and a host of other problems to contend with at the different locations,” Washington National Guard Warrant Officer Jack Androsky stated in the press release. “This exercise is designed to stress everybody out, and teach them how to manage chaos.”

For more information about Exercise ORCA and the Alaska National Guard, visit ak.ng.mil.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com