OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Oklahoma Air National Guard recently partnered with local first responders to practice their response to a severe weather emergency at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base.

On Wednesday, February 8, the 137th Special Operations Wing (SOW) conducted severe weather training, complete with surprise mock weather alerts sent to the Airmen of the base to simulate a real tornado.

According to the Oklahoma National Guard, five base skill sets along with Oklahoma City first responders from the OKC Fire Department and Oklahoma Emergency Medical Services Authority immediately jumped into action. First responders began response and recovery efforts on simulations like damaged buildings, while six Airmen acted as hurt or injured personnel alongside four patient simulators.

Officials say the 137th Fire Emergency Service firefighters got training in extrication during an overturned car simulation. They practiced using their battery-powered rescue spreaders during the simulation.

“Working with civilian agencies is vital to our ability to mitigate any large-scale incident because a single department’s resources are often quickly exhausted,” said Chief Master Sgt. Scott Lair of 137th Fire Emergency Services. “We evaluate our emergency response plans and our ability to execute them so continual joint planning, training and exercising help us strengthen and improve our mutual tactics and strategies for a major response. Having a mutual aid agreement that lines out what each agency can and will provide is key to the effective execution in mitigating a multi-agency emergency.”

According to the National Guard, Airmen were tested in their ability to perform their emergency response procedures to help in speedy recovery to continue operations with civilian partners.

Members of the 137th Fire Emergency Services, 137th Special Operations Civil Engineer Squadron, 137th Medical Group, 137th Special Operations Security Forces Squadron and 137th Command Post instantly began recall and emergency response duties. Recovery efforts began shortly after.

“When a disaster happens, we set up an emergency operations center to help support the incident commander and responders at the incident site in addition to recovery operations,” Lair said. “We put personnel who are subject matter experts in their emergency support function to align with the National Response Framework, which is a standardized guide for response management that outlines how local, state and federal agencies conduct all-hazards response and ensure all agencies are speaking the same language.”