Training
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Overview
Calamityville provides an experiential and developmental research integrated testbed that provides high-fidelity realistic scenarios and technical infrastructure to both local, civilian and governmental researchers. Our all-hazard, actual conditions training environment for first responders (law enforcement, fire, and EMS), first receivers (physicians, nurses, mid-level providers, and hospital staff), Department of Defense (DoD) Special Operations and tactical combat medical specialists, and civilian populations is second to none. For these events, we can duplicate the full range of hazardous environments seen in both man-made and natural disasters.
Calamityville Features
Classrooms
Calamityville has three traditional and one non-traditional classroom. Each is completely outfitted with computers and multi-media support equipment and can accommodate between 15 and 40 students. The non-traditional space is set up as a mock emergency operations center that can be used for traditional classes, but also support command and control and/or decision training and research.
Breakout/Lab Space
Calamityville includes several indoor spaces that can be configured for various hands-on labs or student breakout areas. These spaces are within both our classroom building and our warehouse space on the premises. The high-bay spaces of the warehouse allow large props to be brought indoors where hands-on learning can occur protected from adverse weather, and where conditions can simulate as darkness, wind, noise, etc.
Technical Training Zones (TTZs)
Calamityville’s TTZs are the focal point of our training mission. These functionally oriented, 1-2 acres areas house props that provide controlled, high-fidelity opportunities for scenario-driven, physically challenging training and rehearsal.
The TTZs at Calamityville include:
- Confined Space—500-foot below-grade maze, large aboveground product hoppers, and 90-foot wells/silos.
- Hazardous Materials—Tanker vehicles of various configurations with plans to construct a chemical storage area prop.
- Aircraft Mishap—Both elevated and ground-based props, including a small-engine plane crashed into the side of a building and the debris of a military plane crashed into a community context.
- Complex Vehicle Mishap—This is staged per the training requirement using buses, cars, heavy equipment (cement mixer) etc.
Austere Urban Exercise Setting
Calamityville provides a unique setting of concrete buildings filled with passageways, machinery, open areas, and height to simulate industrial and commercial settings.
Exercises and other scenario-driven activities can emulate very realistic environments without the need to artificially create the mood of an urban setting. This could simulate deploying resources into a third-world environment, a post-incident city situation, or any kind of emergency in a commercial environment.
Austere Wilderness Exercise Areas
Contiguous to the property of Calamityville are two outdoor areas that can be utilized to provide course scenarios with wilderness-like settings where survival, expeditionary, and humanitarian training and exercise operations can occur. Each area consists of roughly 18-acres of woodlands, wetlands, and open meadow, as well as small rocky cliffs and rugged terrain. Access to these properties can be gained through a Calamityville “haul” road that connects the properties without having to utilize public roadways.
Technology Infrastructure
Calamityville has developed several technology-based structures to augment the training provided on-site. These enhancements are meant to further expand training capability, appropriately improve the fidelity of training and exercise operations, and to allow for training review and after-action activities.
- Comprehensive site infrastructure providing water, power, and high bandwidth IT capabilities.
- Selected site features that are pre-designed, and others based on an "empty stage." This allows for maximally flexible, scenario-based training and exercise settings.
- In its Joint Command Operations Research Environment (J-CORE) lab, Calamityville offers an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for training and exercise support. Fully reconfigurable and featuring 12 workstations for emergency support functions, a high-bandwidth standalone internet network, and integration with the Calamityville camera network, the EOC is a highly flexible environment.
Recent Exercises
Operation Serpentine Wall
August 6-7, 2021
Members of the 445th Aeromedical Staging Squadron and 445th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio joined with the 944th ASTS, Luke AFB, Arizona and the 84th Training Command, Fort Knox, Kentucky for a joint force medical exercise designed to increase skills in caring for combat wounded in challenging locations where traditional medical evacuation may not be possible. The Airmen and Soldiers trained at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University's Calamityville training facility in Fairborn Ohio, Aug. 6-7, 2021. (U.S. Air Force video by Master Sgt. Patrick OReilly and Staff Sgt. Matthew Bruch)
