The Better To See You With, My Dear...
Air Force engineers brought a gift of light to the remote
Alaskan village of Red Devil last week.
In the small village of Red Devil, 250 air miles west of
Anchorage, air travel is the sole means to enter and leave the
town. The 4,750-foot gravel airstrip lined with orange cones is
essentially the town's lifeline to the rest of the state. This
lifeline was significantly strengthened Aug. 17 when airmen from
the 611th Civil Engineer Squadron, based at Elmendorf Air Force
Base, Alaska, installed a runway lighting system.
Red Devil, along with 62 other communities, qualified for the
portable runway lighting system through the state's Rural Alaska
Lighting Program because its airstrip was inadequately lit for
aircraft operations at night. The portable system is ideal for the
quiet village because a fixed, in-ground system would be destroyed
by ice sheeting from an adjacent hillside in the winter and
flooding of the Kuskokwim River in the spring.
"Many small villages don't have roads out of town, so if someone
gets injured they're stuck," said Carl Siebe, Alaska Department of
Transportation acting deputy commissioner of aviation. "Once the
system is in place, the lighting kit will allow an aircraft to land
at night, load up a patient and take off to get that person medical
attention," he said.
The deployment of the system took
place Aug. 17 as part of Alaska Shield/Northern Edge 05, the
largest homeland defense/homeland security exercise conducted in
Alaska. The exercise provides an opportunity to integrate local,
state and federal government responses to simulated emergencies.
For the purpose of the exercise, the lighting system deployment was
part of a scenario in which Juneau's runway lights were damaged by
an earthquake.
A 517th Airlift Squadron Blackhawk helicopter appeared through a
haze of smoke from a nearby wildfire to deliver the lighting
equipment to the small village.
Within minutes of touchdown, the engineer crew assembled a metal
ramp and unloaded the portable lighting system from the belly of
the helicopter onto a small trailer.
Approximately 40 minutes after unloading the system from the
Blackhawk, the four-person engineer team distributed the 40 lights
around the runway. Even in the middle of the day, it was easy to
see how useful the system would be during night hours as the green
lights glowed around the airstrip.
Deploying the system to a remote location not only benefited the
small village, but the military units as well.
"It's a totally new environment for everyone involved," Air
Force Tech Sgt. Gregory Eckroth, with the 611th CES, said. "The
training is more realistic when dealing with transporting and
setting up the system in a remote location."
The Red Devil residents said they were thankful to have the new
system. "Red Devil doesn't have a clinic, so in the event of an
emergency at night we will have a more restful feeling knowing
night operations are possible," said Theodore Gordon, tribal
administrator of the Red Devil traditional council. "We are
extremely grateful to the military, not only for bringing us the
lighting system, but also for demonstrating how to set it up."