Domestic QRF reservists

[Fishbone Jones]

If volunteer firefighters can turn out in a few minutes, Res soldiers can turn out in a few hours.Cheers

Providing they have an understanding employer/ education facility, and the MOU's are in place to cover the contingencies. You know it's not as simple as calling their cell phone and telling them to report. In a perfect world, with job legislation, etc, it would be. However, if we did live in a perfect world, we wouldn't be calling them

 

[foerestedwarrior]

Well 32cbg has a DRC like was said. I have been on 3 of the exercises with them(2 in Toronto, 1 in Edgar, ON) They focused on running roadblocks and VCP's and crowd control. The one in Edgar we deployed with the RCMP in support of their Hostage Rescue Team. Pretty dam good training.

My understanding of it is that we are on a 48hrs notice, and the QRF out of Pet is on 24hrs. So they would depoly first, then us if they needed support.

We have been training and activly doing callouts for about 2 years now. I have been called at work one day and told be at the armouries ASAP. I just told my boss i gotta go, and was at the armouries 45 minutes later. We showed up, did some paperwork, then was stood down. In about an hour after the call, we had about 90% of personel that were on the DRC show up.

 

[pbi]

Providing they have an understanding employer/ education facility, and the MOU's are in place to cover the contingencies. You know it's not as simple as calling their cell phone and telling them to report. In a perfect world, with job legislation, etc, it would be. However, if we did live in a perfect world, we wouldn't be calling them

These things certainly help, but I can state from personal experience that we can definitely get Res soldiers into the armoury and getting organized within a few hours. What we can't do, as far as I know, is to generate complete sub-units from a single unit. We usually need to rely on composite sub-units. What we did in 38 CBG was to monitor developing situations, and try to manage readiness through three states of readiness.

Green: Normal daily ops at unit level;

Yellow: Units to stand up a 24/7 duty cell, initiate a fan-out check; and

Red: Call unit members in to the unit and prepare for further instructions.(The call woul be mainly by phone but would include local media, as we did for the BC fire emergency)

Of course, just like volunteer firefighters, this depended on people being willing and available. I believe that since I departed in 2005,  JTFW has issued further instructions on the employment of Res in dom ops.

Cheers

 

[FMRWO]

... If volunteer firefighters can turn out in a few minutes, Res soldiers can turn out in a few hours...

When the Ice Storm struck in 1998 (Monday, Jan 5th), I contacted my res. unit to find out when we would be deployed, no info was available. I proceded to secure my lodging and make arrangements for my wife to have a place to stay with friends. By Friday the 9th, I showed up at the BOR - still no info available... Saturday, (after 6 days) we got the call, Sunday we mobilised and Monday morning we deployed for the first tasking. Three weeks passed before I was ordered back home.

Lesson ? takes the civilian govt a lot longer to call for the military than it takes for us to respond !

My 2c

 

[Old Sweat]

FMRWO

I think you have hit upon at least a major bit of the puzzle. As a personal example of the ice storm, our municpality, which had amalgamated on 1 January)  went completely black at about 1800 on Wednesday 7 January during the first meeting of the new council. Military assistance was requested that evening or the next morning and the first elements of (I think) 31 Brigade were in town on Friday. We eventually had 280 troops in our midst in a matter of days, and darn welcome they were.

The system can and will work when the chips are down.

 

[geo]

Old Sweat....
FMRWO and the rest of us in LFQA have a little bit of another burden to carry in that, back then, we had a PQ Gov't that would be damned if they would break down and ask Ottawa for help..........

I'm certain that it "killed them" to ask for help.

In many ways, the Ice storm was the beginning of the CF receiving respect in this town.... still going from my perspective.

 

[Journeyman]

Thanks for the info, I'd honestly really like to take a look at it but I don't think that link is working. Is it from secured computers/servers on a military computer only??? 

Sorry for the delay; I haven't been following this thread.

I'm not sure why you can't access it. The US Army is usually keen to maximize dissemination of these publications. PM me with your email address and I'll send you a copy of the article

 

[JBP]

That's odd, I tried the link again today and it worked. Maybe when I tried it back then thier server was down for maintenance or something? Never know... Thanks though, very interesting read so far (only couple paragraphs in yet).