By
Staff Sgt. Jessica Switzer
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – Whether delivering critical food supplies to refugees in Darfur, helping with evacuation efforts following Hurricane Ike or helping British troops transition out of Basra, the son of a Sparta, Wis., couple, and his unit, are quickly becoming the 9-1-1 first responders for disasters and emergencies around the world.
Air Force Master Sgt. Craig Brown, son of William and Pam Brown of Avon Road, Sparta, put those rapid response skills to the test during an 11-day joint exercise called Hydra. The 
exercise brought in units from the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps to practice setting up rudimentary bases and airfields, airdropping people and supplies, providing mid-air refueling services, and evacuating those injured in a simulated natural disaster.
Brown is a first sergeant with the 571st Contingency Response Group at Travis. “The exercise is designed to put us in a realistic scenario where we are deployed to an allied country to deliver humanitarian aid to people suffering from a recent earthquake,” said the1993 Tremper High School graduate. He went on to receive two associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force, one in human resources in 1998 and the second in avionics technology in 2009.
“My specific responsibilities are to ensure our airmen are taken care of and able to complete the mission. I make sure their morale, health and safety are high and they are able to do whatever it takes to make this happen.”
The scenario for Hydra ’09 was a 6.0 earthquake in a fictional allied country. The devastation
from the quake extended up to 100 miles out from the epicenter. This scenario allowed the exercise to spread over three locations to provide a maximum of training opportunities. A part of the exercise, called Global Medic, focused on treating and moving the victims of the earthquake.
“This humanitarian exercise gives us the ability to practice in a realistic environment,” said Brown. “We are able to test our command and control capabilities, our ability to receive aircraft onto our makeshift airfield and quickly off-load cargo using real-world scenarios. It 
gives us a real sense of what we would actually be doing if a humanitarian need arose somewhere in the world.”
The exercise, only in its third year, had more than 750 participants from 16 different units, some from the Army and Marine Corps, all worked together to overcome the difficulties related to responding to crisis scenarios. One of the key elements was to bring together the vast array of units and job specialties needed to respond to a major crisis.
“The contingency response mission is an extremely unique mission and unlike any I’ve been a part of before,” said Brown, who is a 17-year Air Force 
veteran. “We are a much smaller unit than I’ve been a part of before but we’re a very close-knit group comprised of many different specialty codes.”
Being part of the forces required to respond at a moment’s notice to events around the world often results in last minute deployments to places with very few of life’s luxuries can be hard, but Brown knows that these hardships pay off in the end by saving lives when disaster strikes.
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