2,500 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen Deployed for G-20 Security
September 23rd, 2009Via: Lebanon Daily News:
More than 2,500 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen – including several from Lebanon County – are in Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit, set to take place Thursday and Friday.
During the mission, dubbed Operation Steel Kickoff, the Guardsmen will fall under the direction of the U.S. Secret Service and will support local, state and federal agencies. Guard members will serve as a regional response force, augment law-enforcement personnel, provide crowd and traffic control, and help with security.
“Everybody is excited and honored to participate in such a global event,” said Lt. Col. Dale Waltman of Cornwall.
Waltman, who works full-time at Fort Indiantown Gap, is the commander of 1st Battalion, 107th Field Artillery Regiment from New Castle, Lawrence County. For the G-20 Summit, he is commander of Task Force Security, comprising more than 600 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen.
Waltman arrived in New Castle on Sept. 16 to begin assembling the task force, then moved into Pittsburgh on Sunday. Since then, the soldiers and airmen of the task force have been training on a variety of different tasks, he said.
“We just reviewed some basic communication skills, and we worked on some specific equipment skills so everybody has that common knowledge,” he said.
The Guardsmen have also completed civil-disturbance and crowd-control training in anticipation of the thousands of protesters who are expected for the summit.
“We’re not anticipating that nothing is going to happen,” Waltman said. “We’ve been briefed on the possibility that there will be some protesters coming into the city, but they haven’t given us a specific number.”
Also in Pittsburgh for the summit are several members of the Fort Indiantown Gap public-affairs office. Capt. Jay Ostrich of Cornwall said the public-affairs specialists’ primary mission is to do news features on the Guardsmen taking part in the mission.
“Basically what we’re doing is helping to tell the Guard story here,” he said.
Ostrich said the public-affairs specialists could also be called to help with crowd control if needed. If that were to happen, he said, he is confident they would be able to meet any contingency.
“We’ve been side by side with the soldiers as they did their training,” Ostrich said. “We’re well prepared to defend ourselves as well, but hopefully the need doesn’t arise.”
The G-20 is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 economies: 19 of the world’s largest national economies, plus the European Union.
This week’s summit was originally planned for New York City but was changed to Pittsburgh in May. Pittsburgh was selected by the Obama administration to highlight the city’s economic recovery after the collapse of its manufacturing sector in the latter half of the 20th century.
“Our soldiers and airmen supporting the G-20 Summit demonstrate the relevance, value and accessibility of the Pennsylvania National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Jessica L. Wright, commander of the Pennsylvania National Guard, said in a news release. “When our communities, commonwealth and country need us, we are always there.”
Writing from an undisclosed location in the Pittsburgh vicinity- I did make some schedule changes due to the spectacle and mayhem and general weirdness of the G-20 arriving in my local.
Holy crap. What a bunch of ah I don’t know.
Whatever.
One of the reasons the G-20 is being held in Pittsburgh is that this city crashed into the dustbin. People who used to live and earn their livelihoods here lost their jobs by the thousands. I for one think steel making in Pittsburgh and Youngstown OH declined and was shipped to China because of the dirt, shitty funk, and totally noxious poisons that steel making spread throughout the world I now live in. This community is now called the Rust Belt.
As kids, we watched the “sun set” when Sharon Steel dumped their slag at night and as it was to the west, we went to sleep watching the sky glowing red.
In my humble opinion, this area became the Rust Belt because there was not a company that wanted to continue making steel here if they were required to make it a clean air enterprise.So we’ve shipped steel making to China. And now China is subsumed by poor air quality.
Hm. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for about 10 years now. I think the movie “Deer Hunter” sums it up quite well. How does a city, let go, let god?
I don’t know what to make of all this police shit going down. Keeping myself under the speed limit. Cops are everywhere on the highways.
Sheesh. I didn’t realize until about a week ago that I drove on a highway about a football field away from the Convention Center on my left while driving out of town.
It’s interesting. Watching how the local media are portraying protesters as really shitty, funky unwashed people. Can’t figure how the media can find a character to abet how they make this shit up.The dirty unwashed.
Protesters. That’s all they are.
Dirty filthy heathen endangering our freaking safety by protesting.
Co-workers freaking.
Some can’t imagine why anyone would protest against “clean coal!”
But then – oh well lets leave it at that.