Col. Doug Wickert
Team Edwards, thank you for the fantastic level of participation we received across the base during last week’s active shooter exercise. Exercises impose difficulties on several levels, from disruption of our jobs and our flight test mission, to impacting daily residential use of base services, to adding stress on already demanding work environments. It is also a reminder of the potential for significant incidents to disrupt our lives, possibly causing hypervigilance or anxiety related to our military work environments.
So why do we exercise? Afterall, as I wrote earlier last month, we work and live in one of the safest communities in our nation; Edwards AFB and Plant 42 are extremely well protected U.S. military facilities with a work force and family members that represent and amplify the broader societal good.
Yet as we experienced last December, we are not completely invulnerable to the threat of workplace violence. And just because we reasonably think it won’t happen – statistically it is unlikely – it doesn’t mean it won’t. And so we exercise to make a safe workplace even safer – for our teammates and our families. The good news is with each exercise, we are getting better at protecting our own – we improve with each exercise, and we will continue to exercise across the spectrum of various emergency response scenarios to ensure that you and those we care for remain safe and, equally important, feel safe.
Thank you, again, for taking these exercises seriously so that our first responders and unit-level teams may continue to utilize a realistic training environment. With each exercise we refine our response procedures and enhance the safety of our team.
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