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Team Moody conducts active shooter exercise

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Briana Beavers
  • 23rd Wing Public Affairs

Moody held its annual active shooter exercise to prepare Airmen and civilians throughout the base for a potential armed threat.

Team Moody first responder worked in coordination with Lowndes County Sheriffs special response team to conduct a realistic exercise to test the installation on lockdown and reaction procedures during an active shooter incident.

“We want to test our wing’s capability to isolate a threat, retrieve and treat patients and transport them for advanced life care,” said Chief Master Sgt. Mark Abrahamson, 23rd Civil Engineering Squadron fire chief. “For this event in particular we wanted to utilize and test the capability of our rescue task force. That’s a tactical capability that the incident commander has in order to get patients out of a hostile area quickly so that they have a better survival rate.”

During the exercise, members reacted according to their incident lockdown checklist with hopes that they could prevent as much damage to life and property in the process.

“This exercise is two-fold, “Abrahamson said. “On one side, the first responders are reacting to the incident while the rest of the base is testing their ability to remember: We have to lock the doors, hide, and barricade ourselves because we have no idea where the shooter is.”

The rescue task force, which include 23rd Security Forces and 23rd CES, responded quickly to the incident and worked together to clear the building and isolate the shooter. The rescue task force trained consistently for incidents like this.

“To prepare for this base-wide exercise today, we trained normally every 45 to 60 days or so over a mixture of classroom and practical exercise applications where we run through this training as a flight, “said Master Sgt. Richard Kirkland, 23rd SFS standardization and evaluation chief.

“It is always important to remember the life-saving steps to take when facing a real-world active shooter incident: run, hide, or fight.”

Base exercises teach Moody personnel to expect the unexpected. This particular exercise shows people exactly how dangerous and unpredictable this type of situation can be.