Mountain rescue training in Alaska

this week's exercise really brought a collaborative effort of federal state local military non-military entities together here in beautiful Sitka to test our capabilities uh test our tactics techniques our procedures it's tough to really point out the key takeaways of a week like this but uh getting together and really seeing firsthand how flexible every organization is we're all humans motivated for the same thing and that's to protect the public public to serve the public and then to safely and effectively respond when the public needs us we simulated an avalanche scenario where we by air inserted teams onto the mountain side onto the hillside uh utilized our collaboration with here locally in Sitka Sitka Mountain Rescue some of their expertise to extract a potential Survivor and then move that Survivor to a higher level of care additional scenario was testing our ability to collaborate in what's called a mass casualty exercise in this case we simulated approximately 40 people who had been stranded potentially injured and needed to be extracted from the rugged wilderness the training environment that the co- score is able to set up for everybody uh that's a unique experience allowed us to understand how and to work with both vessels with survivors in the water and different types of WS and with some complicating in unknown circumstances multiple partners from multiple agencies it's that kind of a work and cooperation together really pay dividends for us working with the Air Force they came out of Anchorage working with s Mountain Rescue uh right here locally in Sitka and then Coast Guard Cutter biley Barco uh the Fast Response cutter out of ketchican Alaska it's just phenomenal seeing everybody come together and it gives me great confidence that we are doing the right things and we're practicing the right skill sets to serve the residents and the visitors of uh Alaska and Coast Guard District 17