It is still more than one month before Jade Helm begins, nor is Michigan one of the states scheduled for the special ops exercise, but on Tuesday, June 2, the people of Flint, Michigan, suddenly discovered that Jade Helm had arrived in their town.
The city government gave the residents only a two-hour notice before their houses were rocked by explosions. Nor did the city consult with or ask the residents — and taxpayers — for their consent. Instead, city officials simply and meekly handed over Flint to the U.S. military for urban “army exercises” using aircraft and “simulated” ammunition.
Note: Jade Helm 15 is a two-month Special Operations exercise that will begin on July 15, 2015, with participation by 1,200 élite members from all four branches of the U.S. military. The military’s Army Special Operations Command admits Jade Helm will be unprecedented in its size and scope.
Andrew Keller and Nick Nulli report for CBS5 WNEM that on Tuesday, June 2, 2015, an otherwise peaceful afternoon in Flint, Michigan, suddenly turned hostile when explosions “you’d expect in a war zone” echoed through the city. People’s homes shook and those inside were caught off-guard.
City resident Annette Humphrey said, “I mean it was loud, it blew up the whole sky or whatever, it was like four or five big bangs.” Jean Glenn said, “I was standing there, and all of a sudden, boom! There’s older people, it probably gave them a heart attack or something.”
It all went down at the shuttered Lowell Junior High on the city’s east side.
The blasts are “just” an Army exercise. Flint’s spokesman Jason Lorenz said the city has been in talks with the army for months now about using parts of the city: “It’s an exercise to help their personnel do training with urban environments.” That training includes using aircraft and simulated ammunition. It will continue for the next 10 days.
Just after 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, the city sent out a release informing the public about the exercises. People say the explosions went off around two Tuesday afternoon, but why were residents given such short notice?
Lorenz said, “Obviously, I can’t speak for the army on that, but we try to give people a heads up when we can, we can’t go into too much detail, we don’t want people just coming to these things and sightseeing.” He said for the safety of residents and the military, they’re trying to keep things under wraps.
But those nearby say the house-rattling explosions were an unwanted surprise. Humphrey said, “I think they should have gave us a warning to let us know there was an army thing going on, I really do.”
See also “Operation Jade Helm, Posse Comitatus, and why we should be concerned” and “What is Posse Comitatus?”.
~Éowyn