Wisconsin Airmen to gain valuable training at New York IRT

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Cameron Lewis
  • 115th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

More than 50 Wisconsin Air National Guardsmen assigned to the 115th Fighter Wing will be providing care to the citizens of New York July 11 - July 20 as part of an Innovative Readiness Training.

Throughout the Healthy Cortland and Greater Chenango Cares IRT, 115th FW Airmen will be working closely with other reserve and active branches of the military to provide medical, dental, optometry and veterinary care to the citizens Chenango and Cortland counties, New York.

While IRTs  provide no-cost care and assistance to the local community they also produce mission ready forces by providing joint real-world training that helps improve readiness and survivability when operating in contingency environments. 

Most of the service members have never been on an IRT nor have they ever been to the area so they must bring all the supplies needed to set up and provide the care needed not only for the community members but for the service members providing the care as well.

“We have been fortunate to have an entire team of support service members here to gain training  and provide our Airmen with the things they need to to get the job done,” said U.S. Air Force Capt. Orman House, the  Norwich site officer in-charge of communications assigned to the 115th Fighter Wing, Madison, Wisconsin. 

With the service members that are providing the care requiring basic things like food, communications and a safe environment to operate, several cooks from the 115th Force Support Squadron are on the IRT along with the 115th Communications Flight Joint Incident Site Communications Capability team to provide these much needed items.

With such a great group of people from all different branches everything needed to provide the community with no-cost medical, dental, optometry and veterinary care was set up in less than two days and both sites are beginning to take patients on July 11.