101st Airborne Commander Says He Shouldn’t Need Reinforcements

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, right, at the dedication of Ebola treatment unit ceremony in Tubmanburg, Liberia, on Monday. Credit: DVIDS

The commander of the 101^st Airborne Division will brief family members at Fort Campbell Thursday via video conference from Liberia. Roughly 700 soldiers from the post are helping build Ebola treatment centers.

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky is leading the military response. He told Pentagon reporters yesterday the mission won’t need as many soldiers as first thought.

He said there’s a surprising number of local contractors to help build the sophisticated tents for treating Ebola patients.

“There’s a lot of capacity here that we didn’t know about before. And so that enabled us to reduce the forces that we originally thought we had to bring,” Volesky said.

By mid-December, 3,000 troops will be in Liberia, and Volesky says that’s all he’ll need – about a thousand less than early projections.

Volesky also says that so far, no soldier has shown Ebola-like symptoms. He credits preparation before deployment, adding that infection prevention training continues in the field.