I am the Chief Supply Chain Officer of the Northern Arizona Veterans Administration (VA) Health Care System, in Prescott, Arizona. My team and I are responsible to ensure our clinicians have the equipment and supplies they need to provide effective Health Care for America’s Veterans at our medical facilities across Northern Arizona. With COVID-19, we’ve been a little busy lately…
COL (Ret) Steven G. Woods
Resident Class of 2004
There are several of us on active duty responding to the COVID-19 situation in Ohio. For example, Soldiers from my brigade and Airmen from the squadron of Col Michael Hrynciw (RES ‘16), an Ohio Air National Guard Officer who is Commander of the 200th Red Horse Squadron, are working together in five Joint Engineering Assessment Teams across the state. These troops are engineers and tradesmen, with a heavy focus on HVAC and electrical construction — all of them bringing tremendous expertise from their civilian professions. We’ve assessed over 40 sites and oversaw the selection of seven alternate care facility locations, with three of them being built and four more in a “warm” status to turn on if there is a spike later in the fall. The opportunity to work with our sister service members, as well as partners from our state departments of transportation, facilities construction commission, and administrative services, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It has been an amazing experience working at the front end of Ohio’s response. Ohio is under outstanding leadership, and it has been a true privilege to be part of this effort.
COL Andrew B. ‘Andy’ Stone, P.E.
Distance Class of 2018
Commander, 16th Engineer Brigade
Ohio Army National Guard (OHARNG)
COL Tony Fournier is the Commander of the 48th IBCT in the Georgia Army National Guard (GAARNG). The 48th IBCT has 1575 Soldiers engaged in the fight against COVID-19 in a variety of missions. Medics are augmenting hospital staff in emergency rooms, ICUs, and trauma centers. The medics who volunteered to come on orders were not working on the front lines as their civilian occupation. We ensured that we were not pulling Soldiers off ambulances, out of hospitals, or out of police cars. Other Soldiers are on Infection Control Teams. These teams are disinfecting Nursing Homes across the state of Georgia and by doing so, we are protecting the state’s most vulnerable elderly population. By keeping these residents out of hospital beds, we are also helping to prevent the state from exceeding hospital bed capacity. We are operating testing sites across the state to give Georgians greater access to testing and to help the Governor and medical community gain better situational awareness of how prevalent the virus is in Georgia. We are working at food banks, operation centers, isolation facilities, and we are transporting supplies like PPE and test kits all over Georgia. The GAARNG is heavily involved in the COVID fight. Soldiers are motivated to help the community and proud of the work they are doing to save lives.
COL Anthony Fournier
Resident Class of 2017, Seminar 13
Commander, 48th IBCT
Georgia Army National Guard
Todd Semonite, RES ‘99
As Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, LTG Todd Semonite is leading the command’s multiple-mission support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fighting COVID-19. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been in support of FEMA under the national emergency response framework to rapidly push subject matter experts (SMEs) to States while working closely with Public Health Services, Department of Defense (DOD), the U.S. Army, and many other agencies and commands. LTG Semonite has personally been available 24/7 to the President and Vice President of the U.S., the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Governors, and other senior leaders, as well as his own USACE force, to aggressively develop and execute engineering solutions to solve needs in hot spots as they appear or are projected. He and his SMEs provided standard designs to States, territories, and tribes and provided technical support in identifying appropriate locations. Among the first emergencies was the need to increase hospital bed capacity nation-wide. In some cases, States requested through FEMA that USACE complete construction to transition facilities into Alternate Care Facilities. The most visible was the conversion of the Jacob Javitz Center in Manhattan, but USACE conducted over 1126 surveys around the U.S. and awarded the expansion of 32 facilities for a capacity of over 14,500 beds by the third week of April. The support of the Corps of Engineers against COVID-19 is critical, while also maintaining readiness and management of Civil Works, Military Missions, Environment Projects, Research and Development, Emergency Operations, Sustainability, and Safety and Occupational Health. For daily USACE COVID-19 updates: https://www.usace.army.mil/Coronavirus/.
LTG Todd T. Semonite
Resident Class of 1999
54th Chief of Engineers and CG, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
BG Tommy Mancino currently serves as the Commander of the Oklahoma National Guard’s Joint Task Force, activated to help the Oklahoma National Guard (OKNG) support a whole-of-Oklahoma-government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the senior military representative on the Governor’s COVID-19 Solution Task Force.
As in other states, the Oklahoma National Guard Joint Task Force is just one part of a larger response by the State. Literally every agency in Oklahoma is contributing to the COVID-19 response and in Oklahoma, the National Guard is in support of the lead agency, the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Other agencies include the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, Oklahoma Department of Transportation, Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security, and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
The National Guard partnerships are critical to getting through the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Oklahoma Guardsmen are helping fulfill, secure, and transport orders of relief and medical supplies to facilities within the 11 identified COVID-19 health administration regions throughout Oklahoma. They also have to be ready, when necessary, to respond to multiple potential natural disasters and to support the Governor and the Adjutant General (MG Michael C. Thompson, RES ’07) and the people of Oklahoma.
BG Thomas H. ‘Tommy’ Mancino
Army War College Fellow 2014
Assistant Adjutant General (Army), Oklahoma National Guard
I’m working the COVID-19 situation (remotely of course) at the National Guard Bureau, assisting federal officials at the state level with mobilized Guardsmen and federal use of Guard-supported facilities.
COL (Ret) Joseph A. ‘Joe’ Wannemacher
Distance Class of 2006
