Los Alamos Lab leads community-wide active threat training exercise

Los Alamos National Laboratory spent much of March and April running a community-wide active threat exercise that put more than 100 role-playing volunteers and more than 180 security first responders through 20 immersive scenarios at the TA-16 Tactical Training Facility.

The drills brought together LANL Protective Force, the Los Alamos Police Department, the Los Alamos Fire Department, the Rio Arriba County Sheriffs tactical team and the Lab’s Emergency Management active threat program. Participants worked through situations built to feel close to real life, with simulated gunfire, smoke and decisions that had to be made quickly under pressure. The Lab said the goal was not spectacle, but to sharpen communication, decision-making and response plans without compromising safety.

Volunteers helped create realistic scenes, and some were fitted with Hollywood-style makeup and prosthetic injuries to show responders what a chaotic incident could look like. The training used personal protective equipment and Engagement Simulation Systems AR-15 rifles that fire blank ammunition. After each scenario, teams debriefed to review performance, identify gaps and improve the way different agencies would coordinate if a real emergency unfolded.

That coordination matters in Los Alamos County, where emergency response often depends on close work between the Laboratory and local public-safety agencies. Los Alamos County Emergency Management says it works with state and federal partners, including LANL, for emergency operations, and the county’s Emergency Operations Plan is built around a whole-community, all-hazards framework. The county’s Local Emergency Planning Committee also holds quarterly public meetings, part of a broader effort to keep preparedness from staying locked inside government offices.

Gilbert Miera, the Lab’s active threat program manager, said he was impressed by how seriously volunteers approached the exercise and said it gave people a safe environment to think through how they might react in a real emergency. Mark Davis, LANL’s Deputy Laboratory Director for Operations, said the collaboration between the Laboratory and community security professionals had been years in the making and that the partnerships benefit everyone in the community.

For nearby residents in Los Alamos and White Rock, the practical value is straightforward: faster coordination, clearer communication and better trained responders if an incident ever reached the streets around the Lab. The exercise also fit into LANL’s broader Nuclear Security and Safeguards Training effort, which already includes hands-on instruction and demonstrations aimed at keeping one of Northern New Mexico’s most important institutions prepared for the worst.