PINEDALE — On Friday, March 20, 2015, Sublette County Emergency Management hosted a joint Tabletop Exercise (TTX) with members of the Sublette County Emergency Services Group and members of the Wyoming Army National Guard (WARNG) and Wyoming Joint Task Force.  The purpose of the exercise was to introduce local first responders to the multiple resources available from the National Guard in the event that an emergency situation extends beyond the capabilities of Sublette County.

During the morning brief by Lt. Colonel L. Thomsen, a scenario was introduced to the participants and plans were discussed on how to mitigate the emergency situation.  Throughout the day, new information was injected into the scenario and participants had to work through each new obstacle.  Given the rural location, it was quickly realized that resources within the county would require assistance from the state level.  Sublette County Emergency Management Coordinator, Jim Mitchell, explained, “We can only handle so much before our resources are exhausted and we have to reach out to fulfill shortages in an incident with this level of complexity.”

In addition to assisting with the planning of the project, the WARNG brought a communications unit and their Mobile Emergency Operations Center to demonstrate the potential assistance that they have to offer.  This TTX will now generate an improvement plan to better help managers of the SCESG to train towards and fulfill their roles in a major incident like this.

–From a press release