HOMER, N.Y. – More than 50 Wisconsin Air National Guard members 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.
“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 who 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.