The State of the Union is...

Safe. For now. I will get back to that in a minute. First a little catch-up. We were deployed to assist in the Colorado Flooding last October. By that time, the flood was already 47 days in and the major structures were already in place. We were there for about seven weeks. I did not post many updates because it was most just steady state stuff: helping people connect to printers, running online meetings, and setting up shared server space. Nothing too exciting.

We were home for the holidays which was nice. I got to see my parents for a couple days. In January, we were the primary team up. This means we had two hours to get to the office and 12 hours to be anywhere in CONUS (continental US). Luckily, the month was quiet except for The State of the Union Address (SOTUA) last night. As we were the primary team and already here, we took point.

What makes the SOTUA so special is that the president, both houses, the Supreme Court, and most of the cabinet are all there. That means that most of the line of succession are there. This makes it a ripe target for attack and is designated as an NSSE - National Special Security Event. 

The smaller regional FEMA team was sent down into the heart of it to handle smaller issues. While our national team was kept at an undisclosed location outside the blast zone, er, I mean Capital area.  We had everything set to roll from a safe distance out just in case the worse happened. Luckily, the speech went off without incident and the month is almost over. 

This weekend is another large event - The Super Bowl. We, by proximity, are the up team for that. However, since it is not an NSSE, we just get to stay here on standby to drive up in case something does happen at the event. Looking further ahead, March will be our primary month again and should be very busy with exercises and training. Stay tuned for updates from those!!