Winter 2005                                             Volume 7    Issue 1

Teamwork Counts; Anticipating the Best, Preparing for the Worst
DeAnn Konkel, KCEM, Sedgwick County Division of Public Safety, Community Liaison Program Manager, Wichita, Kansas

On August 10-12, 2004, nineteen members of the Sedgwick County Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) were invited to the National Homeland Security Training Center at Camp Gruber Military Base.  Their local responders from Sedgwick County Emergency Management (SCEM) K-9 Search & Rescue Team, and teams from the Sedgwick County Fire Department Hazardous Materials (HazMat) Task Force and Heavy Rescue also joined in the three days of exercising and training at the 33,000-acre military base in Braggs, Oklahoma, southeast of Muskogee

CERT members received specialized training during the three-day exercises at Camp Gruber.  Other state agencies participating included Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team (WMD-CST), SWAT, and the State Fire Marshall’s Bomb Squad.  This was the first joint training for the CERT members and their local responders.  The opportunity gave both the CERT members and the local responders a new appreciation for each other and helped them learn to function as one team.   

The exercises offered simulated WMD attacks, including professional actors and actresses.  The exercises were designed to become increasingly more difficult each day.  For example, the first day involved just one building, the second day there were two, and on the third day, John Powell, Homeland Security Exercise Planner, informed CERT members they’d be “scattered like a covey of quail” in an area five blocks wide and three blocks long! 

During the final hot wash, John Powell told CERT members that this particular CERT group was the finest they’d ever hosted in the

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