The last couple weeks we've been having an Operational Readiness Exercise (ORE). It's basically where we pretend that some big event has happened and we have to deploy a lot of people really fast and/or our base gets attacked. The idea is to see if we're prepared in case something like that did go down.
So all of last week was "Phase I" of the exercise. For that we got the "order" that we had to deploy people. I was in charge of the air passenger terminal section, so I helped get people through the deployment processing line.
This was our area. I was working 12 hour night shifts. There wasn't a lot going on at night sometimes so it was pretty empty.That lasted all week, then for the weekend we went into "Phase II- Fight the Base". For this phase we had to spend the whole time in our chem gear.
It's pretty much the same as if you were sitting at your desk in full snow gear all day. Then every once in awhile the "alarm" goes out that we're being attacked so you have to dive under your desk and pull on your gas mask. Then you just chill there for awhile. It's actually a really good time to take a nap. Though it is interesting to try and talk on the phone or type when you're all geared up like this. (There's actually a lot more to it than this, but I don't want to try and explain it all, so that's the basics)
Thankfully the exercise ended earlier this week, so now it's back to normal work. But we'll most likely be doing it again in a few months.