3 Arkansas ANG units jump into hurricane relief support missions

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Bob Oldham
  • 189th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. --  While hurricanes Gustav and Ike ripped up parts of Louisiana and Texas, a handful of Arkansas Air National Guardsmen deployed into their paths to help officials in both states prepare for the aftermath, while others helped repatriate 35 Louisianans who were evacuated to Little Rock before Gustav struck.

Four Airmen from the 154th Weather Flight deployed Aug. 30 for Baton Rouge, La., and two from the 123rd Intelligence Squadron deployed Sept. 11 to Corpus Christi, Texas, later moving to San Antonio, eventually setting up operations in Houston.

"We provided weather forecasts for the aviation assets," said Master Sgt. Paul Wilkerson, a 154th Weather Flight meteorological technician.

His four-person team provided mission execution forecasts to more than 50 UH-1, OH-58, UH-60, HH-60 and CH-47 helicopters. Mission execution forecasts are 24-hour projections broken down into two-hour blocks, he said. The group also provided sector forecasts for a 200-250 nautical mile area.

"We recorded 91-mph winds in Baton Rouge," he said.

The team has portable weather forecasting equipment that can be set up nearly anywhere to observe weather conditions.

The CH-47 helicopters they supported dropped 1,500 sandbags in New Orleans. Each sandbag weighed 7,000 pounds. The bags were to support a levee that had been breeched.

The two intelligence Airmen in Texas were Northern Command's eye in the sky, providing real-time, full-motion video support to a pair of RC-26B surveillance aircraft that will be flying over Texas looking for damage in the region.

They're primary focus, Senior Master Sgt. Randy Chambers said, is to keep a data link open from the planes, so that real-time video and data can be transmitted line of sight to their location from the aircraft, encoded and sent via the Internet to NORTHCOM in Colorado Springs, Colo. The video and data will be used by NORTHCOM officials and emergency response agencies to see the damage in real time and determine appropriate requirements to help that region of Texas recover.

"We're working all daylight hours, essentially 12-14 hours a day," Staff Sgt. Courtney Chastain, an operations intelligence analyst, said Sept. 15.

She worked the Hurricane Katrina response in 2005 and said Ike is no comparison.

"What we saw with Katrina was a lot of water damage, but Ike is wind damage," she said.

At Houston's Ellington Field, a Texas Air National Guard base, Ike's winds ripped a static F-16 fighter jet from its stand and tossed it about 20 feet away, upside down, Sergeant Chastain said.

She said she's been analyzing power lines and sub stations in rural areas but has seen imagery from heavily damaged Galveston Island.

"It's pretty bad, indescribable," she said of the damage in the Galveston area.

Closer to home, a 189th Airlift Wing C-130 lifted off from the Adams Field tarmac in Little Rock Sept. 14 with 35 passengers, returning them to New Orleans after they were evacuated to Little Rock because of Hurricane Gustav. An aircrew eariler in the week flew medical supplies from Altus Air Force Base, Okla., to Central Arkansas.

"We're the governor's 911 emergency force," said Col. Jim Summers, 189th Airlift Wing commander. "Whatever he needs, whenever he needs it, that's what we're here to do during these state emergencies."

The C-130 crew hauled the patients, family members and a team of nurses and medical specialists to New Orleans International Airport.

Arkansas has emergency management assistance compacts with its neighboring states, which allows Guardsmen to cross state borders at the request of the governor that needs the assistance.