Special Va. Guard response force prepares for evaluation - May 11-14, 2015

Soldiers and Airmen assigned to a special response force of the Virginia National Guard participate in various training scenarios May 11-14, 2015, at the Virginia Beach Fire and EMS Training Center in Virginia Beach, Va., to prepare for an external evaluation scheduled for May 15. The special response force is the Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear High Yield Explosive Response Force Package, known as the CERFP (pronounced “surf-p”), and it conducts tasks associated with incident management, urban search and rescue, mass casualty decontamination, technical decontamination, medical triage and treatment and fatality search and recovery. The force is made up of Soldiers and Airmen from Va. Guard units based in Petersburg, West Point, Rocky Mount and Langley Air Force Base, as well as personnel from the Washington D. C. Air National Guard. The unit conducted training in three phases that included basic refresher training for disaster response, additional instruction and review of the unit’s tasks while donning all protective gear and a final dress rehearsal before the external evaluation. Role players simulating causalities took part to add more realistic conditions. Read more at go.usa.gov/38gSP. (Photos by Staff Sgt. Miko M. Skerrett, Virginia National Guard Public Affairs)