3 Jun 2015

A new lease on life: Realty assistant aids Ebola response efforts in Liberia

SAVANNAH, Ga. – No stranger to warfare in the jungles of Vietnam and the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, Angel Rivera set out on a familiar task in an unfamiliar territory that bred an enemy just as malignant as those he encountered as a career Soldier.

28 Apr 2015

Savannah’s FEST-A delivers unmatched engineering support traversing Middle East

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Four months after launching into a six-month deployment to Kuwait, Savannah’s Forward Engineering Support Team – Advance (FEST-A) convened recently to discuss engineering solutions supplied to the region and assignments on the horizon.

4 Mar 2015

Life in Liberia: Unique challenges, high rewards

After turning over the last of 10 Ebola treatment centers in January, U.S. military task force members have begun withdrawing from West Africa as new cases of the disease tail off to virtually zero in Liberia. By all accounts, however, it’s been a deployment unlike any other for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers team supporting Operation United Assistance.

16 Dec 2014

Clock winds down as elite engineering team readies for deployment

SAVANNAH, Ga. – As 2014 departs, so will 12 members of the 542nd Forward Engineering Support Team – Advanced (FEST-A), who deploy to Kuwait in January for more than six months to provide specialized technical engineering support for the Central Command area of responsibility.

31 Oct 2014

USACE mission in West Africa aimed at supporting Ebola containment

WIESBADEN, Germany – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has joined the fight against Ebola in West Africa. The main body of Europe District’s Forward Engineer Support Team-Advanced departed Oct. 21 for Monrovia, Liberia, to take part in Operation United Assistance, an Africa Command mission to provide logistics, training and engineering support to U.S. Agency for International Development-led efforts at containing the virus outbreak in the region. District officials said the deployment could last up to six months.

23 Oct 2014

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Deploys Team in Support of Operation United Assistance

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deployed a team with engineering and engineering-related expertise to Liberia in support of Operation United Assistance, which is part of the comprehensive U.S. Government Ebola effort in West Africa led by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

6 Oct 2014

FEST-A gears up for future deployment, seeks new talent

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain spread itself out before Piper Bazemore, recently strapped into a MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter as part of an engineering mission in the region.

23 Oct 2012

Satellite communications link Forward Engineer Support Teams

No matter where they are deployed, each Forward Engineer Support Team (FEST) must be able to reachback and communicate with stateside and other deployed command and control units. The FESTs use a commercial-off-the-shelf capability, designed and developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Reachback Operations Center (UROC) at ERDC in Vicksburg.

16 Jan 2012

District Achieves another First for Tribal Program

In the first meeting of its kind, Robert Isenberg and Maj. Seth Wacker, members of the South Pacific Division’s 59th Forward Engineering Support Team - Advanced (FEST) joined District Tribal Liaison Ron Kneebone in a visit with representatives of two New Mexico Pueblos Dec. 14 and 15. They met with the Pueblo of Santa Clara and the Pueblo de Cochiti to provide the Native American tribes with critically needed engineering support to address local infrastructure issues and to provide FEST members with real-world training.