Fort Carson conducts full-scale crisis exercise

Fort Carson soldiers are putting their skills to the test in their annual full-scale exercise. This year, it’s focused on cyberattacks.

“We do it to test our emergency operating systems, how we coordinate with the local community. It exceeds our external capacity and making sure we can protect our soldiers and families on this installation,” said U.S. Army Garrison-Fort Carson commander Col. Ronald Fitch.

For this scenario, soldiers acted as if a utility worker hacked their system, causing a water main break and gas leak, resulting in a fire.

“It focuses a little bit on what the Army would classify as an insider threat, looking at an attack against our utility system,” Fitch said.

The training scenario continued with the utility worker holding someone hostage, and additional resources being called in to help.

The exercise takes hundreds of people to conduct, and it’s something required by Fort Carson every year.

“The army has a list of about 13 different scenarios they want you to run through. We’ve combined about four of them into this exercise,” Fitch said.
Fort Carson conducts these exercises to ensure the soldiers, families, civilians, retirees and visitors are prepared, able to respond and recover from an all-hazards event.

“We can go back and do some analysis on what took place, where we reached our imitations or breaking points,” Fitch said.

In the past, full-scale exercise scenarios have included chemical accidents, tornadoes, winter weather, active shooter, aviation accidents, terrorist attacks and more.