Friday, March 25, 2022 | 3:25 p.m.
RENO — Nevada’s National Guard leaders learned some valuable lessons from the more than 700 days guardsmen and women were activated to help combat COVID-19 — its largest and longest state activation ever in response to a domestic emergency.
“What haven’t we learned is a better question,” said Col. Brett Compston, who served as Nevada's incident commander at the Division of Emergency Management and helped oversee the more than 1,400 troops who assisted in the effort.
He's confident the experience will make them better prepared to deal with future crises.
“This is probably the greatest crisis we have faced in the last 100 years other than World War II, if you exclude the current world situation,” Compston said. “In normal times, we would put on a crew of four or five and we’d go fight a fire and that was relatively easy."
Nationally, more than 30,000 National Guard troops were activated to help fight COVID-19, initially primarily to help administer tests and later vaccinations.
In New Mexico, they served as substitute teachers. They administered medications at Colorado hospitals, transported patients in Maryland and helped manufacture more than 2 million personal protective equipment items in Texas.
In Nevada, they directly administered more than 833,000 tests and 819,000 vaccinations. Other missions included contact tracing, traffic control, meal delivery, laboratory support, warehousing and distribution of PPEs.
