America's North Shore Journal

March Air Reserve Base in California has become a staging area for relief workers and search and rescue teams to assemble supplies, personnel and equipment Jan. 13, 2010, following the Jan. 12, 2010, magnitude-7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Personnel and supplies will be loaded onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft and flown into Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The aircraft is assigned to the 60th Air Wing, Travis Air Force Base, Calif., and will arrive in Haiti Jan. 14, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Roy Santana)

Air Force Special Operations on the ground in Haiti

Airmen and C-130s from the Air Force Special Operations Command are continuing to provide disaster relief to the people of Haiti.

MC-130H Combat Talons and a C-130E Hercules from the 1st Special Operations Wing here landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, overnight and already have left the area for additional support taskings. The wing will continue to support requirements, as additional aircraft such as MC-130P Combat Shadows are en route carrying people and equipment.

In addition, two MC-130W Combat Spears from the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., are positioned here for additional support requirements. The aircraft are transporting equipment such as generators, vehicles, fuel, food and water, and communications packages, as well as specialty teams including special operations medical units and special tactics teams.

Paras land to assist Haiti

An initial contingent of 100 82nd Airborne Division troops deployed to Haiti around noon Jan. 14, and another 800 Soldiers will follow tomorrow to support disaster relief and humanitarian support.

A lead element from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 73rd Infantry, left Fort Bragg today, and the entire battalion, along with a command and control element from the division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, will join them Jan. 15, said Army Col. Billy Buckner, 18th Airborne Corps public affairs officer.

Meanwhile, the 82nd Airborne Division’s entire 2nd Brigade Combat Team – on tap as the U.S. global response force – “has been told to be prepared to deploy as needed or required,” Buckner said.

“So they are prepped and ready to deploy. They have done all the things they need to do to get ready,” Buckner said. “And should they be directed to deploy, based on the situation on the ground and additional resources, they are ready to do so.”

As the global response force, the 2nd BCT is on 24/7 standby, ready to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. In that capacity, it trains for the full spectrum of missions – from forcible entry scenarios and follow-on stability operations to humanitarian aid and disaster response, Buckner said.

So when the first verbal order to prepare a brigade to deploy came at 4 a.m. yesterday, he added, most of the groundwork already was laid.

The initial elements are deploying with their own individual equipment and force-protection capability, but few vehicles, Buckner said. “A lot of logistics planning is being done, based on what’s in the theater,” he said. “But right now, the big push is the soldiers, going in relatively light without a lot of rolling stock.”

Once in Haiti, their mission will center on humanitarian support and disaster relief, but Buckner said the soldiers also could provide security, if needed.

“They bring an ability to provide people to go out and assist immediately, to get on the ground very rapidly and to be able to assist the [joint task force] commander in whatever tasks and requirements he needs them to perform,” he said.

Many of the deploying soldiers have served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, giving them experience Buckner said will prove invaluable supporting the Haiti mission. “They are used to deploying, and they are used to operating under very difficult and challenging circumstances,” he said.

A member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Virginia Task Force 2 Urban search and Rescue watches as civilians put cargo netting over the equipment that the task force is bringing with them to do their mission in Port Au Prince, Haiti. More than 80 members of the task force are being deployed to support rescue efforts there. Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Tim Comerford

It’s a little after noon, Jan. 14 and it’s already been a long day for Battalion Chief Donald Washburn, Dam Neck Annex. He and two others from the Mid-Atlantic fire fighting team were activated as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Virginia Task Force 2, urban search and rescue, to deploy to Haiti.

“I got a call last night around 11:30 and I didn’t know until two or three in the morning if I was actually going,” Washburn said. “We are waiting on aircraft until we can go.”

Since then, he and more than 80 firefighters from the Hampton Roads area have been busy gathering and loading equipment onto palettes and securing them. Washburn said the long days of work are just beginning.

“We will be working every day; digging through rubble, shoring up structures, providing first-aid and doing whatever we can to help people out,” said Washburn, a veteran firefighter of 23 years.

Washburn said he feels that he is well prepared to handle the situation he is about to face. “I have pretty much specialized in technical rescues through out my whole career,” Washburn said.

And being a rescue technician is just what is needed for becoming part of the task force. Technical rescue refers to those aspects of saving life or property that employ the use of tools and skills that exceed those normally reserved for fire fighting, medical emergency, and rescue. These disciplines include rope rescue, swiftwater rescue, confined space rescue, ski rescue, cave rescue, trench/excavation rescue, and building collapse rescue, among others.

For Michael Scott, supervisory captain at Little Creek and Christopher Connelly, supervisory captain at NAS Oceana, this mission represents a culmination of years of training. “This is my first deployment, I have been on the team for about five or six years now and had a whole lot of training, I am ready to put it to use,” Scott said. “I have only been on the FEMA Team for two years and this is also my first deployment.”

The team brought everything they could think of. “We are bringing everything and the kitchen sink,” Connelly said. “Common tools like you have in your garage up to special breaching equipment and computer based search and rescue programs.”

But search is only one of their jobs, the other is rescue. “We are all trained up to [Advanced Life Support or paramedic] level and we bring everything that we would need for providing medical help for the people that we are rescuing as well as ourselves,” Connelly said.

They may need to give medical help to their fellows if a structure collapses on a searcher, but they trust in their teammates to keep them safe. “We have structural specialists that come with us. They do a risk management analysis and let us know what is safe and not safe or tell us what to do in order to make it safe,” Scott said.

But all of them are looking forward to helping. “I am 100 percent excited, I’m looking forward to using the skills we learned in training,” Connelly said.

“We are ready to go. This is something we like to do, we like to help out,” Washburn added.

“Without a shadow of a doubt,” Scott agreed.