Operation The Great Salmonella Scare of 2022

 

Well it's official...AT (Annual Training) 2022 is down in the books...in more ways than one! 

This year, we were sent to Camp Garfield in Ravenna, Ohio-my first time on said base.

Most of the week was spent attached to the 2Bn (Second Battalion) attachment. Wednesday was a day full of my sort of stuff-land nav and combatants.

As many know, yes, I am Search and Rescue trained, and it's always good to brush up on skills. Wednesday morning, armed with maps, compasses, and protractors, we headed off into the woods to work on our land navigation skills. 

Is land nav easy? No, not necessarily. Okay, it's complicated, and as we were informed in SAR class back on the Columbus State Delaware campus, steps must always be taken to ensure that the rescuers don't become the ones in need of rescuing themselves! However, the most debilitating part of this week's training was the annoying thorn bushes all over the woods-all of us got caught at least once. The ground was muddy, the air was humid, and more or less we were not having the blast of our lives...but it was a successful training! 

The second part of that day focused on us changing into PT gear and marching over to the combatant building for, you guessed it, combatant training. I myself have some fairly decent training in combat sports (i.e. boxing) and once we got into it, much of my training came rushing back to me! Combatants were a fairly good pastime for me, and now I want to get more into it! This training made me remember how much I enjoyed it!

However, the biggest highlight of the week was the night before. Tuesday night, after a big day of POD training, as well as a simulated VRC (Volunteer Reception Center) training, shouting came for an emergency mass formation. What's this about, we were all wondering?

"There is a suspected case of salmonella on base," we were informed. "This person was working in the kitchens this morning. Necessary protocols must be taken. If you were working in the kitchens, report to 3MED immediately. After that, all barracks and latrines must be deep cleaned and sanitized."

Guess who had been assigned to kitchen duty the morning before? That's right, yours truly. So off to 3MED I went along with the others of whom had been working in the kitchen recently. However, after they heard that I had not been in the kitchens that very day, I was released and told that I would probably be okay. So off to the barracks to help with the cleaning. The lovely fumes of bleach permeated the buildings, making us all light headed, but we all had work to do. Let's get everything mopped and wiped down! Hooah!

In our barracks room, *all* of our gear had to be moved out from under the beds so that we could mop. *All* surfaces that someone could possibly touched had to be sprayed. And on top of it all, the news came from the kitchens that all of the food had to be thrown out, and of course the chow hall would be shut down for the rest of the night. So, no dinner. As one might imagine, we were all quite grumpy, as one of my professors would say.

All ended fairly well, however. The chow hall was opened again the following morning after all of the necessary precautions had been made. Not a lot was followed up on, business went back to normal, and that led into my land nav and combatant day. But seriously, as all said people are going to be talking about this AT for years to come! "Operation Garfield's Nightmare, The Great Salmonella Scare of 2022." 

BTW, big hooahs to the volunteers and evaluators from Ohio EMA, CERT, and the Health Department who came out on Tuesday (before the shit hit the fan-too bad they left right before and missed it!) for our POD and VRC trainings. We apparently got some great ratings on our work from said organizations and they were very impressed. Also worth mentioning is the hilarious moment when one of the "role-players" from the Health Department caused an uproar (staged) in our VRC, having to be escorted out by security screaming "I'll call my mommy!" (again, it was a "staged" tantrum, to prepare soldiers to deal with sorts of stuff that could occur in a real-life situation), not to mention the other one who sat in the "staging area" shouting over and over again about how she was a great dog groomer and therefore she would be a great asset to a storm cleanup team. 

But again...the highlight is The Great Salmonella Scare of 2022. People are going to be talking about this for YEARS!!! :D 

Hooah to all.