The 400: Technical School Airmen Endure the Storm and Then Stay to Pick Up the Pieces

THE 400

Technical school Airmen endure the storm and then stay to pick up the pieces

STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON // STAFF SGT. JETTE CARR

21 September 2015

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. — As Hurricane Katrina struck the base, rising waters swallowed parked cars. The base and the 6,000 sheltered military students, permanent party, civilians and their families survived the Category 4 hurricane with no casualties. The initial damage was catastrophic to base infrastructure. The base is currently in the assessment and recovery stage. (U.S. Air Force photo)

Aug. 29, 2005 – Hurricane Katrina reached the coast of Mississippi, bringing with it high winds and widespread flooding.  When the storm dissipated,  it wasn’t calm that settled over the city. Instead, thousands of people were left without homes, with family and friends who had died in the storm or its aftermath, and a long road ahead of them as they tried to come to grips with what they had lost. While people worked to resurrect their city, a large group of Airmen came together to help in whatever manner they could.
Tech. Sgt. Steven Brumley, now the 637th Communications Squadron communications focal point NCO in charge at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, in retrospect, finds it interesting how much of a non-event Hurricane Katrina was to begin with.  The storm wasn’t expected to grow so large, or to have such a devastating effect when it impacted land. Coming from an inland state, Brumley wasn’t sure what to expect when he first heard about the incoming tempest nearly one decade ago.

Courtesy Photo

In September 2005, Brumley was a 17-year-old airman basic who’d just arrived at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, for technical training to become a radio frequency transmission systems Airman. Because he was so new, he hadn’t yet been given the opportunity to visit the surrounding community of Biloxi. Therefore, his memory of the city pre-storm is now relegated to the view he saw from a car window while on his way to his base the first time.
“I can barely remember what it looked like,” Brumley said.  “There was stuff all along the shore – the casinos and whatnot — and it was bright.  I saw it all on the drive in, and then the next time I went off base, there was nothing at all along the shore. It was all gone.”
Just hours before the storm hit, an evacuation/shelter in place notice was given out.  Hundreds of tech school students gathered into crowded rooms at Jones Hall, each finding small spaces on the floor to claim as their home for the next three days.

Courtesy Photo

“It got hot really fast, and you could hear the wind howling outside,” Brumley said.  “I remember wandering the halls, always dodging to get out of someone’s way, eavesdropping on conversations, time dragging by slowly.  Students were congregated by boarded-up exits with phones checking for signals or playing cards, or just talking in groups.”
After the storm had passed, the doors were opened to let in fresh air; however, Airmen weren’t allowed to leave the building until a couple days later. On the first day, people crowded around the door openings to peer out and assess the damage.  Brumley said he didn’t see much from that vantage point, but later, during the cleanup effort, he would get a more startling view of his surroundings.
Once Katrina had finished ripping through Mississippi, those affected began the arduous task of clearing out the debris and mending whatever structures they could.  On the base, 400 students were given the option to stay and help in the effort; all others would be evacuated. Brumley was quick to volunteer.

Courtesy Photo

“One thing I told myself when I went to basic training was I wanted to ‘make a difference’ in my career,” he said. “I remember the (military training leaders) announcing that everyone would be flying out to Sheppard (AFB), but they needed some students to stay back to help with cleanup.  I really didn’t know a lot about what was going on immediately following the storm. I had no idea what was coming or what to expect.  All I remember thinking was ‘Here’s an opportunity to make a difference,’ and I jumped at it. I’ve still never regretted that decision.”
All remaining 400 students congregated into one building on base.  Each day, they were separated into teams and given an area to begin picking up trash and debris – a common commodity on base after Katrina. The flightline smelled of dead fish after being submerged during the storm, and tree branches blanked the ground.  Brumley said he was grateful to never get tasked with cleanup of the Commissary building, which at one point had been flooded with nearly six feet of water.  He’d heard horror stories about the smell of the place.
On a few occasions, Brumley’s team was able to give aid in the surrounding areas.  During one trip, the students’ driver pointed to a street as they passed.  He let his passengers know that entire families had been found dead in their homes after they tried to ride out Katrina there.  That was the first time the magnitude of the storm hit home for the young airman basic.

Courtesy Photo

“One thing that struck me about the few times I helped clean up off base was the overwhelming feeling that we weren’t making any progress” Brumley said.  “I went out in crews and we would spend all day moving trash into piles, but the destruction felt endless, like we hadn’t even put a scratch on the surface.
Over three weeks, the 400 Airmen worked tirelessly every single day. After that time, classes began again and the technical schoolers’ parts in the recovery effort, for the most part, came to a close.
“The experience has helped me put other things in life into better perspective,” Brumley said.  “You can think about something like Katrina and you realize all the little things you get caught up in are petty and don’t really matter – they’re just distractions.  When something catastrophic happens, you have to focus on the bigger picture.”

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. — Students with the 332nd and 335th Training Squadrons here prepare to be evacuated to Shepard AFB, Texas, aboard a C-17 Globemaster III from the 58th Airlift Squadron, Altus AFB, Okla. Sept. 1. More than 2400 students and non-essential personnel will be evacuated from Keesler because of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Mike Buytas)

Many of the 1,000 technical training students who had to be evacuated around the time of Katrina’s landfall wanted to stay behind to help. Once they returned to Keesler, one of the first questions they asked was how soon they could begin helping in the area recovery effort, said Col. Robert F. Simmons, then the 2nd Air Force director of operations. The account of the students’ evacuation and role in the area’s recovery was told in “Operation Dragon Comeback: Air Education and Training Command’s Response to Hurricane Katrina” by Dr. Bruce A. Ashcroft and Dr. Joseph L. Mason with the Air Education Training Command Office of History and Research.
“Most of these folks had only been in the Air Force for eight weeks,” said then-Chief Master Sgt. Rodney Ellison, AETC command chief master sergeant, when he visited Keesler AFB two days after the storm. “But their sense of commitment and their willingness to stay and do whatever it took to clean up, because they had been through the storm and felt they were abandoning others when they needed help the most — that’s heartening. Because here are people whose biggest concern two or three months ago was who to take to the prom. Now they’re concerned about people they’ve never even met.”
Though 400 non-prior service students stayed to help clear the base of debris, the 81st Training Group initially wanted to keep 800 students, but had to reduce the number to make billeting room for Mississippi National Guard troops after U.S. Northern Command made Keesler an operational staging activity three days after the storm.
“The students played a tremendous role in the recovery effort,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Capasso, who took command of the 81st Training Wing about two months after the storm. “From base cleanup to going downtown to help the recovery efforts of the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport, they were literally involved in that every week.
“Probably every day of the week, there were students out and about doing great things for Keesler (AFB) and the community, such as repairing and building houses and picking up debris off the beaches. Recovery covers a lot of things in getting the wing and the community back on their feet, and for the first month or so after the storm, those 400 students had their hands full.”

People continue cleanup efforts here after Hurricane Katrina passed through Aug. 29. Although it did not pass directly over the base, the base sustained more than $765,000 in damage. Maximum winds reached 50 knots. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Jeremy Cotton)

Katrina may have slowed the wing’s training mission for a while, with officials facing the task of reconstituting more than 100 resident courses that were taught before Katrina, but it was quickly back to its pre-storm footing. By the first anniversary of Katrina in 2006, the 81st Training Group was averaging 3,400 students, a 26 percent increase from the pre-storm average, said then-Col. Deborah Van De Ven, who assumed command of the group a month after Katrina, according to an August 2006 article on the official Air Force website.
The command formed a tiger team to work with the 81st TG staff to deal with training issues and establish priorities to bring up 142 courses determined by Air Staff. After the hurricane, the number of staff members dropped by 10 percent, but the staff augmented the instructor force with people from other bases.
By the time Capasso took command on Nov. 15, almost 2,000 non-prior service students were in training, more than before Katrina. On Aug. 21, the last student whose initial skills training was interrupted by Katrina had returned to finish training, which led Capasso to say, “Today, our training mission is back to 100 percent, thanks to the hard work of our Airmen.”
Capasso retired in 2011 as director of cyberspace operations and network services with the Office of Information Dominance and chief information officer for the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force and is now vice president of strategic programs for a cybersecurity solutions provider in Ashburn, Virginia. But a decade after Katrina, he still has fond memories of the students who played such an integral role in the recovery of the base and the community so early in their Air Force careers.
“The whole story of Katrina is a story of courage, strength and resiliency – people helping people and neighbors helping neighbors,” Capasso said. “It was an eye-awakening experience for all of those new Airmen who had just joined the Air Force during their time (at Keesler).
“Then, a major storm comes through, and they’re out there making a difference to a community that has been devastated. I think the stories they can tell are good teaching moments for all of the folks they met as they got older and more experienced in their Air Force careers. It was a brilliant story of how people, no matter who or where they are, can come together.”

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Hurricane Warning: 53rd WRS aircrews weather dangerous storms to gather data, save lives

STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON

15 September 2015

The view above Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo)

As the WC-130J Hercules draws closer to a hurricane deep in the Atlantic Ocean, the navigator lines up the crew’s flight plan with the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) information requests. Just for a moment, as the plane approaches the storm, the 20-year Hurricane Hunter veteran’s mind drifts back to a similar mission a decade ago. That storm, Hurricane Katrina, changed the way crewmembers view virtually every storm mission they fly.
“While I’m setting our computer up, it always takes me back to that normal Sunday morning in 2005,” Lt. Col. John Fox said. “We knew it was going to be a bad storm, but like so many other people, I was in the trap of thinking of Camille (a Category 5 hurricane that devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969). Nothing was ever going to be as bad as Camille, but here came Camille’s big sister. Katrina tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, John, you’re not a forecaster.’ The Katrina experience taught us that you never really know what you’re going to see.”
Although each flight is different, during a typical 10-plus-hour mission, each of the five crewmembers stay busy while on their way to the storm, inside the eye of the hurricane, and on the flight back to Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. On each mission, the crew flies through the hurricane in what they call an alpha pattern, penetrating its eyewall at least four times and collecting valuable data from each quadrant of the storm.
As “the overall boss of the aircraft,” Maj. Sean Cross, the aircraft commander, lets his co-pilot take care of the flying as he monitors the radios and the rest of the crew. While currently in his 14th season as a Hurricane Hunter, Cross has seen more than his share of hurricanes, both from the air and on the ground. Since he joined the squadron in 2001, Cross has made almost 150 “pennies,” a term crewmembers use for flights into the eyes of tropical storms and hurricanes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew spends their time on pre-storm checklists. They also use the satellite phone — a convenience crews didn’t have onboard in previous years — to talk with another crew on their way back from a previous hurricane mission to get pre-briefed on expected weather conditions. At the same time, they know they could face something different, maybe even considerably more intense, than what the previous crew experienced just a few hours earlier.
Daylight gradually disappears as the plane draws closer to the storm. The crew is relatively quiet as they approach the hurricane’s outer edges.

Air Force graphic // Travis Burcham

“The eyewall’s coming up crew!” Maj. Devon Meister, the pilot, announces as the plane approaches the area of about 200 miles of intense, spinning thunderstorms that whirl around the hurricane’s center. Anyone not already buckled up quickly clicks in their seat belt. The pilots are especially focused because they want to make sharp turns to ensure they reach the exact center of the storm, so they can gather the information they need. Sometimes the first encounter with the eyewall isn’t as violent as the crew might expect, but they know not to take it for granted on subsequent passes through the teeth of the hurricane.
“What you have to be careful of is that you don’t drop your guard on the next pass about 40 minutes later, because this thing is living and growing and spinning counter-clockwise,” Cross said. “The spot you went in is not going to be the same stuff you go through an hour and 40 minutes later.”
Inside the storm, the navigator and weather officer study the radar. The crew doesn’t mind flying through areas in red, but they want to avoid magenta, which usually means heavier rains and turbulence, and flashing white, which would signify severe turbulence.

Loadmaster holding a biodegrable dropsonde.
(U.S. Air Force photo)

As the WC-130J continues through the eyewall, radiometers on the wings gauge wind speed at the ocean’s surface every second. Meanwhile, Master Sgt. Jeff Stack, a loadmaster, watches the screen on his computer monitor while holding a cylindrical capsule in his left hand. He waits for the weather officer to give him the signal to drop the first biodegradable dropsonde that will collect the vital data on the storm as it falls attached to a parachute to the ocean surface.
The dropsonde is one of several weather instruments that measures temperature, pressure, dew point, wind speed and direction inside the hurricane, as well as the surface pressure inside the hurricane’s eye. It can directly measure at several levels in the atmosphere as it descends.
The weather officer is focused on his radar, waiting until the winds reach the maximum peak. He relies on surface wind data from the Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) — which continuously measures the winds at the ocean’s surface directly below the aircraft — to tell him when to give the signal the loadmaster is waiting to hear to release the dropsonde.

Lt. Col. John Gallagher roughly calculates the size of Hurricane Igor’s eyewall onboard a WC-130J Hercules during a mission Sept. 16, 2010, over the Atlantic Ocean. Colonel Gallagher is a flight meteorologist with the Air Force Reserve Command‘s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base. Miss. (Photo // Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller)

During the 2005 season, only a few aircraft had the instrument available, but now each of the 53^rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron airplanes have the SFMR, nicknamed “the Smurf.” This constant measurement of surface winds gives the NHC a considerably more complete picture of the storm and can also determine rainfall rates within a storm system.
“Now we’re able to map the entire surface wind field underneath a hurricane and provide very accurate data on the strongest winds and where they are in the storm,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Talbot, the 53rd WRS chief meteorologist. “The exciting thing about this instrument is you don’t have to rely on visually seeing what the winds are, or just getting a single point sample. You have hundreds and hundreds of samples of what the wind speeds are, and you can see as the storm intensifies or weakens, and that directly relates into the warnings that go out.”
Finally, the SFMR shows the winds at their peak, and the weather officer gives the signal to the loadmaster. A few seconds after the loadmaster releases the dropsonde into a tube through the bottom of the aircraft, it descends attached to a tiny parachute toward the ocean and immediately begins sending data back to the plane on the way to the NHC.
Suddenly, the rain and winds cease, and the sky is now blue above the plane, which is surrounded by magnificently white and puffy clouds — what the crewmembers call “the stadium effect.”

The sun sets as the clouds break after the WC-130J aircraft penetrates Tropical Storm Lee Sept. 2. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters,” were gathering atmospheric data on the storm to send to the National Hurricane Center. The crew flew was flying to Houston to store the aircraft as Tropical Storm Lee was set to bring heavy rain to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. (Photo // Staff Sgt. Valerie Smock)

“We’re breaking out now,” the pilot announces to the rest of the crew. “We’re in the eye.”
“Turn left 10 degrees,” the weather officer tells the pilot, so the plane can reach the direct center. Once at the spot where the wind readings fall to zero, he tells the loadmaster to drop another dropsonde. The crew can then connect the two coordinates and refine forecasts on the storm’s movement and direction.
Once out of the storm, the crew works on their post-storm checklists and making sure the NHC has all the information retrieved during the mission. Some crewmembers are already thinking about the impact the information will have on weather forecasts and if people in the storm’s path will heed the warnings.
As each hurricane season begins, Cross reflects on the 2005 storms, including one conversation he had with a fellow Gulf Coast resident who had just discovered his house was destroyed. The man covered his mouth with his hand, and Cross tried to comfort him by placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. Cross told him he could rebuild, but was informed the family had no insurance.

The casino resort area of Biloxi, Miss., received significant damage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which had roared through the area four days earlier, as seen in this Fla. Fish and Wildlife Commission water patrol tour Sep. 2, 2005. Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast with wind gusts in excess of 140 miles per hour, flattened buildings and flooded areas from Florida to Louisiana. Millions of people were left without power and hundreds of thousands homeless. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Jennifer C. Wallis)

“It’s really hard when you do this years on end, because you know there’s always going to be somebody standing with their hand over their mouth because everything they owned is gone.”
Katrina remains the costliest hurricane in U.S. history and the deadliest since 1928, with more than 1,800 deaths, mostly due to the 30-foot storm surge that breeched the levees in New Orleans and flooded 80 percent of the city. But Katrina was only one of four hurricanes that reached Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale for winds higher than 175 mph. The busiest season on record produced three of the five most intense hurricanes in the past decade, according to NHC data.
Fortunately, this year isn’t forecast to be as devastating as the 2005 hurricane season was — a year that set records for tropical storms and the most major hurricanes to hit the U.S. The Hurricane Hunters remain ready for whatever the season — which continues through Nov. 30 — throws at them.  Less than a dozen 53^rd WRS members remain from a decade ago, when Katrina damaged or destroyed about 30 percent of the homes of squadron members, including Fox’s.

A member of the Calif. Task Force (CATF) 4 out of Oakland, Calif., searches through the rubble of a house in Biloxi, Miss., Sep. 7, 2005. CATF joined the U.S. military and other agencies from around the country to search for missing Biloxi residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast with wind gusts in excess of 140 miles per hour, flattening buildings and flooding areas from Florida to Louisiana. Millions of people were left without power and hundreds of thousands homeless. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Jennifer C. Wallis)

If he ever needs a reminder not to take a storm for granted, Fox just recalls a flight 1,000 feet above the ravaged Mississippi coast from Houston to Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia, where they flew the rest of their storm missions before returning to Keesler AFB in November.
“Normally, there is some talk and some banter on the aircraft. This was dead silence,” Fox said. “I remember how quiet the airplane was. You were kind of punch-drunk looking at that. In our little part of the world, Katrina was like a house fire that everybody suffered, when you realized what was really important.”
On missions inside the most powerful storms like Katrina, crewmembers often reflect on how the data they gather will affect advisories and warnings that help people on the ground stay safe.
“You just hope that because we risk our lives to get this information out there to help forecast models to put the warnings out there, that people listen and pay attention,” Cross said.

Thick clouds engulf the WC-130J aircraft as it penetrates Hurricane Irene August 27. The flight was a pretty smooth one for the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters,” who transmitted storm data to the National Hurricane Center for their forecast models. The dropsonde measures air temperature, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and relative humidity. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Ryan Labadens)

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2015/09/hurricane-warning/#sthash.xn8gjQFv.dpuf

Addition By Subtraction: Choosing amputation later helps some wounded warriors gain independence

While serving in the Air Force, Daniel Crane injured his right arm which caused nerve damage leading to a complete loss of function. Prior to heading to the Invictus Games he chose to receive an amputation. Crane participated in multiple events in London, including Archery, Athletics and Swimming. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Andrew Lee)

An off-duty shooting two years ago took away three things in retired Staff Sgt. Daniel Crane’s life that he enjoyed. Gone was the former quarterback’s ability to throw a football. Gone, also, was his shooting capability, at least at the proficiency he was accustomed. Even his career as an active-duty security forces Airman seemed to be lost forever.
On July 28, 2012, Crane was shot in his vehicle by an anti-U.S. forces national while stationed at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The bullet struck Crane’s brachial artery and severed nerves in his right arm, requiring eight surgeries. The use of his forearm and hand never returned.
But as Crane reached the two-year anniversary of the shooting, he was perhaps busier than he was before his injury. Less than a month before the anniversary he calls his “alive day,” Crane had an elective trans-radial amputation that took the right arm to 4 inches above his wrist. He has now resumed his CrossFit workout while training for five sports in the inaugural Invictus Games, an international competition for wounded servicemembers, in London.

Daniel Crane competes in a 100m Men’s Ambulant IT3 race during the 2014 London Invictus Games at the Lee Valley Athletic Centre, England, Sept 11, 2014. Servicemen and women participating in the inaugural Invictus Games are those who have overcome adversity in every sense of the word. Be it either wounded, ill, or injured, these warriors have found themselves an invitation to compete in the games and represent their country, service, and comrades. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Justyn M. Freeman)

“I never would have thought I would be involved in as many activities and sports after my injury and amputation,” Crane said. “I feel so good to really get back into competition. You know those guys that everybody is annoyed with because they are always so competitive? Now I’m that guy everyone is annoyed with, but at the same time, I also make sure the guy next to me is doing as well as he can, too.”
For eight years, another wounded warrior, Tatiana Perkins, lived with a paralyzed right arm after a motorcycle accident on May 12, 2006. She was a staff sergeant with the Air Force Reserve’s 940th Civil Engineer Squadron at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., when the accident left her with a partially torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn medial collateral ligament, shattered clavicle and complete nerve erosion in her right arm.
A doctor first suggested amputation a year and a half later. Perkins said she didn’t seriously consider it until she moved to Tucson, Ariz., and began working as an amputation rehabilitation coordinator at the Veterans Administration Hospital. There, she met a man with a similar injury who became a Paralympic athlete after his elective amputation.
While Perkins, like Crane, is an athlete who competed in the Warrior Games this year, her main motivation for eventually having her arm amputated was different – she wanted to start a family with her husband, and didn’t relish the thought of being a one-armed mother.

Tatiana Perkins practices the standing discus throw Aug. 3, 2014, at the Air Force Academy, Colo. The Wounded Warriors are conducting their final group practices prior to the up coming Invictus Games in London Sept. 10-14, and the Warrior Games Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, 2014. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Tim Chacon)

“Taking care of a child is one of the things I worried about with one arm, like changing a diaper,” Perkins said. “While I know how to change a diaper with my feet, it’s not like I can go out with my child to the mall and use a public restroom to change the diaper with my feet. It’s about independence for me.”
Crane and Perkins are among the many wounded warriors who choose to have a limb amputated for safety concerns and to aid their rehabilitation. Both retired Airmen credit being around and talking to other wounded warriors with helping them make a decision they think will improve their quality of life.
“When it came time to pulling the trigger on the amputation, it made it that much easier,” Perkins said. “Here I was, thinking about what was taking me so long to make a decision on improving myself, and there were Airmen, Soldiers and others, who only a year or two into their injuries were already prospering and doing things they never thought they would do prior to their injuries. I got tired of playing in my backyard. I wanted to get out.”
Elective or delayed amputations amount to about 15 percent of all combat-related amputations, according to a Military Medicine article published in 2011. Surgeries are performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center near Washington, D.C.; Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio; Naval Medical Center San Diego and Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.

Retired Staff Sgt. Melissa Coduti and Tatiana Perkins participate in a 100m sprint during the Invictus Games at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre, England, Sept. 11, 2014. Athletics is one of several sports the more than 300 wounded warriors from 13 nations competed in. The vision of the Invictus Games is to harness the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate a wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Tiffany DeNault/released)

Wounded warriors who face this decision must weigh several important factors, said Dr. (Maj.) James Bales, an orthopedic surgeon with the 81st Medical Group at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss. As head coach of the Air Force Warrior Games team, Bales talks with many Airmen and Air Force veterans who have to decide about elective amputation. When counseling them, Bales wants the wounded warriors to consider whether the benefits of amputation would outweigh the risks.
The main factors he recommends they consider are: the functionality of the limb, whether the muscles or nerves still function, how bad the limb was damaged and the location of the injury. Recovery and rehabilitation tend to be easier for lower limbs than for the hands and arms, and aren’t as susceptible to swelling, he said.
“We’ve made such huge strides in below-knee amputations, with some great prosthetics available today, that these people can pretty readily return to relatively completely normal lives,” Bales said. “For the upper extremities, the hand is hugely more needed than the foot, so to press forward with hand or arm amputation is a lot bigger deal because of what you need them for — activities with daily living. When we talk about the upper extremities, we want to see if we can save the thumb and one finger to have a pincher group, so he can pin something down with the forearm.
“The main thing is we want to focus on 98 percent of the things they can do, rather than the 2 percent they cannot.”

Tech. Sgt. Leonard Anderson and Staff Sgt. Daniel Crane go over swimming techniques during the Wounded Warrior Pacific Invitational (WWPI) swim meet at the Iolani High School’s Dillingham Pool. WWPI is a competition among seriously wounded, ill and wounded service members from the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy and Special Operations Command. The WWPI is the largest joint-service competition to take place outside the annual Warrior Games. (U.S. Navy photo/Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Kenneth R. Hendrix)

A tattoo Crane got above the scar on his right arm near the one-year anniversary of the shooting shows his commitment to the things he can still do, even after his delayed amputation. The tattoo illustrates the words of a Bible verse, “Faith and trust in what we cannot see.”
Now that the hand that was no longer serving him as intended was removed, Crane is learning to shoot and throw a football with his left hand. He received his prosthetic hand just a few weeks after his June 20 amputation, and now even has hopes of returning to his active-duty career, though he was medically retired in February.
“The chances of me coming back into the military now that I’ve had my amputation, I think, have gone up because I will be able to do so much more,” Crane said. “Now that I have the prosthetic, I can grab things with my hand, I can do pushups, and I can still pass the fitness test.
“Now that I’ve gone through my own elective amputation, I am really very happy with it. With the prosthetic, I feel I can do more and more. It just makes me feel like I have two hands again.”

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2014/10/addition-by-subtraction/#sthash.7GrcRS8o.dpuf

New C-130J May Join Hurricane Hunters

The view of a hurricane is quite different at 10,000 feet. But even from the vantage point of a WC-130 Hercules aircraft, the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron  crew knows the potential death and destruction that could lie within the eye of the storm below them.
The 2005 hurricane season is expected to be a historic one for the Hurricane Hunters as they hope to complete the transition from the WC-130 to the faster, modernized WC-130J model this summer.
"We've done many experimental missions with this aircraft, and there were issues with radar, and with props that were previously reported in the press," said Lt. Col. Doug Lipscombe, 53rd WRS aerial reconnaissance weather officer. "Those issues, we think, have been resolved. We aim to prove that in the coming months, and we hope we will be able of fully implement the aircraft.
"If everything else goes as we hope, we will reach initial operating capability this summer."
The WC-130J's main features include an all-glass cockpit, heads-up display and modernized computer systems. But its best attribute will likely be what it will be able to accomplish in hurricane conditions.
"This aircraft can fly higher, faster, and consequently, farther than the C-130H," Lipscombe said. "The engines are more powerful, but also we're not required to carry that big 10,000 pound gas tank in back of the aircraft like we have in the WC-130H.
The 53rd WRS, based at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., flies into tropical storms and hurricanes to gather information that is invaluable to National Hurricane Center forecasters.
"When a storm is way out in the Atlantic, about all we have aside from aircraft reconnaissance is satellite imagery," said Steve Letro, a meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Fla.
"Satellites tell us something about the storm, but nothing gives us information like the planes going through the hurricane and getting information from inside it. This is how we get an idea of what steering currents there are and whether the environment is favorable for strengthening or weakening."
In September 2004, Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew a combined 59 missions into Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, Lipscombe said. Crew members, as well as the rest of the population in risk areas, learned valuable lessons in the 2004 hurricane season. Even though the squadron is based on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, last year's hurricanes also made a personal impact, especially for Lt. James Linder, 53rd WRS commander. Linder, who is also a Delta Airlines pilot, just recently moved back into his house on the east coast of Florida after it sustained heavy damage in Frances and Jeanne.
"The lesson from 2004 was to be prepared," Lipscombe said. "Every year, we see the number of deaths due to hurricanes decreasing, and that's the good part of it. The unfortunate part is we also see the damage. Through no fault of your own, a bullseye was painted on Florida, and you experienced four major hurricanes in one year, which is hard for anyone to bear.
"But when a hurricane is coming ashore, there's nothing anyone can do about that. People in Florida can be assured that we will continue helping the National Hurricane Center fulfill its mission of putting out the best possible forecasts."
With the help of the WC-130's Improved Weather Reconnaissance System, the crew measures outside free air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and evaluates other meteorological conditions such as turbulence, icing, visibility, cloud types and ocean surface winds.
The crew obtains other vital information by dropping dropsondes - 16-foot cylindrical weather sensor packages that resemble canisters at the bank drive-through window.
These dropsondes gather information as they descend about 2,400 feet per minute beneath a small parachute to the ocean. The canister radios weather data on the temperature, humidity, pressure and winds inside the storm. The crew then processes the data and transmits the information by satellite to the National Hurricane Center ever 30 seconds.
"The National Hurricane Center is getting high-density data via satellite," Lipscombe said.
"They get a complete look at all four quadrants of the storm, so they'll be able to see what the intensity of the storm is and where the exact center is, along with wind speed and pressure. All that information is fed into the National Hurricane Center computer modules."

Early Season Hurricane Hunting

Cylindrical objects called dropsondes released from WC-130J Hercules aircraft helped 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron crews gather valuable meteorological information on some of the most intense recent hurricanes. A new system the Hurricane Hunters installed on all 10 WC-130Js in 2008 helped them obtain a more complete picture of the first named storm in the 2010 hurricane season.

Hurricane Alex became the strongest June hurricane since 1966 to make landfall in the United States and the first to hit the Gulf of Mexico in the season's first month since 1995. The stepped-frequency microwave radiometer, along with the dropsondes, enabled the Hurricane Hunters to show the hurricane strengthen in the final hours before landfall.

"We're getting a good picture of the surface winds of the storm," said Maj. Jeff Ragusa, aircraft commander on the Hurricane Alex mission. "That's a capability we didn't have a couple of years ago.

"The airplane is collecting a horizontal picture of the storm," the major said. "Then, we throw the dropsonde into the mix. As it falls to the surface of the water, it gives us a vertical picture of what's going on beneath the airplane. So we get a horizontal look, as well as a vertical look, to give us as much information as we can to send back to the National Hurricane Center. As the dropsonde is falling, it's sending information, two messages every second, back to the airplane."

The dropsonde is a weather instrument package released by a weather reconnaissance loadmaster into the eyewall and center of the hurricane. As a parachute, or drogue, slows the descent to the ocean, the dropsonde sends current pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed, direction and Global Positioning System information to instruments on the aircraft, said Tech. Sgt. Amy Lee, a weather reconnaissance loadmaster with the 53rd WRS. That information is then sent by satellite to the National Hurricane Center.

The Hurricane Hunter crew entered the eye of Hurricane Alex in the WC-130J at 5,000 feet when the storm was 130 miles off Mexico's coast. Information gathered by the dropsondes and a radiometer called the "smurf" showed wind speeds had increased to 80 mph and maximum winds were 105 mph in the northeast quadrant of the storm. They also detected the hurricane's lowest minimum pressure had dropped to 958 millibars, said Capt. Douglas Gautrau, an aerial reconnaissance weather officer. Later, the pressure dropped even further to 948 as it moved toward land. By comparison, on Aug. 13, 2004, Hurricane Charley had a low minimum pressure of 941 millibars before it slammed into southeastern Florida with 150 mph winds as a Category 4 storm. Fortunately, Hurricane Alex's winds never exceeded Category 2 strength.

The radiometer, which is located within a pod attached to the aircraft's wing, accurately measures wind speeds directly below the aircraft at the ocean's surface. Hurricane Hunter missions already improve hurricane center forecasts by 30 percent. Major Ragusa said the radiometer enhances the data the aircrew provides for hurricane forecasts. Before the radiometer was added in 2008, Hurricane Hunter crewmembers gathered wind speed information from dropsondes and observations through windows of the WC-130J. The radiometer also measures rainfall rates in a storm; flooding in Mexico and south Texas was a major concern with Hurricane Alex.

"Before, we were getting about 10 observations every hour," Captain Gautrau said. "Now, with the smurf, we're getting data every second, with 3,600 surface wind observations every hour."

The crewmembers on these flights are all Reservists with the 53rd WRS, the only military unit worldwide that flies regular hurricane reconnaissance. Sergeant Lee said she feels a sense of duty more than personal pride for the role she plays in the data the Hurricane Hunters provide to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

"I personally feel very sad, when a hurricane makes landfall, for the people in the path of the storm and their loss," Sergeant Lee said. "I'm really happy they were able to get out of the way in time. I'm proud just like anybody else is proud who did a job. I did my duty."

Hunters Knew Opal Would Pack An Awesome Punch

Only the most obsessed hurricane watchers had Opal on their minds in the Wiregrass in late September last year.
But 1st Lt. Scott Spitzer and The Hurricane Hunters were seeing something drastically different from their vantage point inside the hurricane.
Opal was not the comparatively minor minnow the National Hurricane Center was seeing in its forecasts, but a killer shark of a hurricane.
The data the crews from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron provided the hurricane center from inside the eye of Hurricane Opal showed that practically overnight, it had developed from a Category 2 storm to a monster with winds approaching 150 mph.
"With Opal, the drop in pressure was the thing for us," Spitzer said.
"There is usually a couple of millibars drop in about a day. That was happening by the hour in that storm. I imagine the National Hurricane Center was pretty awake that night."
Opal, the first hurricane to sweep directly through the Wiregrass since 1985, caused more than $1.5 million in damage in Houston County alone. At least nine area counties and 38 Alabama counties were declared disaster areas. In all, Opal was responsible for $3 billion in damage in the U.S., Guatemala and Mexico.
For The Hurricane Hunters, penetrating the eye of the hurricane has been compared with the exhilaration of a wartime kill for a fighter pilot. During 1995, Spitzer's first hurricane season, he netted a phenomenal 64 penetrations.
In high school, Spitzer became interested in tropical weather after Hurricane Elena flirted with the coastline in his hometown Pensacola , Fla., before coming ashore in Mississippi in 1985.
For some, the thought of flying into hurricanes such as Opal and Erin probably seems more like suicide than a job. But The Hurricane Hunters have a phenomenal success and safety record. Spitzer, the son of the late Col. William Spitzer, a 30-year Air Force pilot, downplays the danger.
"A lot of people consider this a dangerous mission, but a lot of times I think the guys in Bosnia have a far more dangerous mission," Spitzer said. "Because nobody is shooting at us.
"Everything the storm throws at us, our crews are trained to the level where we can handle it."
Since the military began hurricane reconnaissance missions in 1944, the Air Force has lost only three planes, all in typhoons in the Pacific. In that time, the Air Force Reserve aircraft have gathered inside information - literally - on some of the most intense and dangerous storms of the century, including Hurricane Camille in 1969, Hugo in 1989 and Andrew in 1992.
"There are two factors for that," said Maj. Doug Lipscombe, an aerial weather reconnaissance officer in the 53rd WRS. "Our maintenance people baby these airplanes. That's not to say the airlines don't baby theirs because they do. But because of the importance of our mission and the danger involved in flying into these storms, the maintenance people make sure the aircraft is in top condition.
"Also, our crews are trained extensively before they go out on a mission. We are very careful not to place ourselves in jeopardy. Based on past experience, we know where we can be and where we should not be."
To appreciate how important the squadron is to accurate hurricane forecasts, one need only remember the night of Oct. 4, 1995 in the Florida Panhandle and southeast Alabama.
"Opal was one of the prime examples of why we need to be out flying," Lipscombe said. "The night before Opal struck, a number of our airplanes were flying into the storm around the clock.
"Over a 12-hour stretch of time, we observed Opal go from a Category 2 hurricane with a pressure of 948 millibars and wind speeds of 105 mph to a Category 4 hurricane with a pressure of 916 millibars and wind speeds of 150 mph.
"During that time, the hurricane center said they did not observe that on satellite. Our data coming to them every 10 seconds allowed them to make the call that Opal was strengthening and speeding up, so people were evacuated earlier along the Florida coast. Because we were out there, fewer people lost their lives during Hurricane Opal," Lipscombe said.

Staring into the Enemy's Eye

TEN THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN - This enemy does not fight with rifles, Scud missiles and anti-aircraft fire, but with the elements of nature's most awesome package of destruction.
Nevertheless, the United States Air Force was summoned.
Members of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base on the Mississippi coast took to the skies once again. Their mission was to fly directly into enemy territory, where an incredible storm boasting 100-mph winds and blinding rain persisted.
This time, the enemies were Hurricanes Edouard and Fran, with another tropical system off the coast of Africa possibly headed for a showdown with members of this squadron better known as The Hurricane Hunters.
The data taken from inside the eye of Hurricane Fran aided the Carolina coast's evacuation effort before the storm blew ashore late Thursday night.
"We're military guys, and flying into these storms has been likened to flying into combat," said Maj. Doug Lipscombe, an aerial weather reconnaissance officer.
"Military guys always want to have an enemy. Well, our enemy is the storm. So while we're out there flying into the eye, the military part of us is saying we conquered that hurricane by getting through that center and gathering all the data to tell everybody exactly what is going on inside that thing."
Riding on The Hurricane Hunters' WC-130 seems like just another flight until the aircraft reaches the hurricane's eyewall at 10,000 feet. During the 12 minutes or so in the eyewall, which can be 25 to 40 miles wide, the crew's visibility is zero. Pelted by blinding rain, hail and lightning, the durable Air Force Reserve workhorse airplane shakes and rolls inside the worst the hurricane has to offer.
The average mission entails four such penetrations of the eyewall.
"It's always the ride of a lifetime," Lipscombe said. "It's like going down a roller coaster blindfolded or down the highway 70 mph during a downpour. You want to pull over and slow down because you get that uneasy feeling.
"Well, we can't pull over and slow down. We just keep flying through that stuff."
After about 12 minutes of this barrage in the eyewall, suddenly the ride becomes smooth, almost eerily gentle. There is a mild breeze, sunshine and a blue sky above, with a whirling wall of almost heavenly white clouds all around the aircraft.
"It all depends on the storm," Lipscomb said. "Bigger storms, like Edouard, typically have well-formed eyes, and we experience what is known as a stadium effect. It's like being on the 50-yard-line of a big stadium and all you can see are seats all around. All we see are clouds going up to 40,000 to 50,000 feet.
"So we're down here at the bottom looking up and all we see are clouds and blue skies above us. At night, you can see the stars. It's a very beautiful sight and one very few people get to see."
But The Hurricane Hunters don't fly these missions for postcard views. They furnish The National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla., with information their satellites are unable to gather, improving hurricane forecast accuracies by more than 30 percent.
The squadron's 10 WC-130s, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's WP-3 Orions, also based in the Miami area, are the hurricane center's eyes and ears.
"The information The Hurricane Hunters bring back is very valuable," said Houston County Emergency Management Agency Director Shelby Womack. "With this information, we can tell how a storm is strengthening."
"It all boils down to credibility and risk," Lipscombe said. "If the forecast is credible, people will take less risk and vice-versa."
In 1995, the second-most active hurricane season of the century, the 53rd WRS flew more than 160 reconnaissance missions. Twelve were in the eye of Hurricane Opal, which struck the Wiregrass Oct. 4, 1995.
Using a bow-like maneuver called an alpha pattern, the WC-130 penetrates the hurricane's eye from all four quadrants of the storm.
In each section, the operator releases a cylindrical object called a dropsonde through the floor of the plane. A parachute slows the dropsonde's descent to about 1,000 feet per minute as the sensors measure the hurricane's barometric pressure, dew point and humidity.
The information is immediately processed by a computer at the rear of the aircraft and sent by satellite to the hurricane center. The airplane's Improved Weather Reconnaissance System samples the atmosphere eight times per second and averages the data every second, Lipscombe said.
When a hurricane is within 1,000 miles of where the 53rd WRS aircraft is flying, The Hurricane Hunters go to work. They began flying into Hurricane Fran from St. Croix and moved to a stateside base as the storm approached the U.S. mainland.
WC-130s have enough fuel to fly up to 14 hours, but most hurricane reconnaissance missions last between 10 to 12 hours. Approximately six of those hours are spent inside the hurricane.
"It's just like combat - you don't want innocent people to pay with their lives," Lipscombe said. "We don't want innocent people on those beaches and shore lines to pay with their lives when it comes to these storms."

A View from Inside the Hurricane

Nothing silences an airplane full of newspaper reporters faster than a face-to-face meeting with the eye wall of a Category 4 hurricane.
While en route on a 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron hurricane mission, the questions posed by media representatives from Tallahassee to Tokyo often resemble those posed by children.
"How does the airplane fly without falling apart?"
"Don't you get scared?"
Then, there's the question almost every reporter asks:
"Has anyone ever died doing this?"
"Yes, but just a little," the crew member often responds, with a straight face.
During my public affairs career in the Air Force, I had opportunities to fly in several major storms while assigned to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. My duties included accompanying national media representatives on flights with the 53rd WRS, the famed "Hurricane Hunters."
Crew members compare penetrating the eye of a hurricane to a wartime kill for a fighter pilot. It can also be compared to going down a roller coaster blindfolded 100 mph in a stinging downpour at more than 30,000 feet in the air.
Riding on the Hurricane Hunters' WC-130J, an aircraft converted for weather reconnaissance, seems just like another military flight until the aircraft reaches the storm's eye wall at about 10,000 feet. The windows are pelted by blinding rain, hail and lightning, sometimes so heavy the crew can't even see the wings of the airplane. The WC-130J shakes and rolls throughout the 12 minutes or so in this treacherous part of the storm. The storm's most intense winds are found here.
The view through the windows is often not that spectacular. Through most of the storm, the airplane is flying through clouds, and once inside the eye wall, the rain is pelting the windows like nails.
After about 12 minutes of this barrage in the eye wall, suddenly the ride becomes smooth, almost eerily gentle. There is a mild breeze, sunshine and a blue sky above, with a whirling wall of almost heavenly white clouds surrounding the aircraft. This is the eye of the hurricane. Every once in a while, the most picturesque sunset can be seen through the airplane's windows.
There are moments in some storms when you can look out the window and see the ocean-blue water through the storm and sunshine above the plane.
Once the WC-130J hits the eye wall, all chatter stops - not that you would hear it if someone was talking. At this point, all anyone can hear is the rain pounding the plane, and that wind. This is a wind that screams.
Fortunately, the WC-130J is a tough airplane, built to land on short, dirt runways in third-world countries and places where disaster has hit.
The squadron's WC-130s, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's WP-3 "Orions," furnish the National Hurricane Center with information unavailable to satellites. The 53rd WRS is responsible for missions in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans.
NHC officials say these inside-the-storm missions improve hurricane forecasts at least 25 percent. Hurricane reconnaissance began with Lt. Col. Joe Duckworth's flight in an AT-6 Texan into the eye of a hurricane during World War II. By 1947, the U.S. Weather Bureau began a full-time hurricane warning service, with the Navy in charge of flying into Caribbean storms and the 53rd WRS handling the West Central Atlantic. After Hurricane Camille devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, the 53rd WRS moved to Keesler four years later. In 1991, the hurricane flying mission was given to the Air Force Reserve.
From the Navy to the NOAA and Hurricane Hunters today, these flights have obviously made a difference in saving lives. Between 1900 and 1910, an average of 800 people were killed each year by hurricanes, according to Facts on Files statistics. By the 1990s, the number dropped to five, even though the cost of property damage increased from virtually nothing at the turn of the century to $2.6 billion in the 1990s.
With the help of the WC-130J's Improved Weather Reconnaissance System, the crew measures outside free air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and evaluates other meteorological conditions such as turbulence, icing, visibility, cloud types and ocean surface winds.
The crew obtains other vital information by dropping dropsondes - 16-foot long cylindrical weather-sensor packages that resemble canisters at the bank drive-through window. These dropsondes gather information as they descend beneath a small parachute to the ocean. The canister radios weather data on the temperature, humidity, pressure and winds inside the storm. The crew then processes the data and transmits the information by satellite to the National Hurricane Center every 30 seconds.
Although the WC-130 begins flying in developing storm systems at 500 to 1,500 feet, the aircraft penetrates hurricanes at 10,000 feet. It makes four passes through the eye wall to gather data on damaging winds from all four sectors of the storm and determine the sea-level pressure in the eye and temperature difference inside and outside the eye.
In 1995, the second most-active hurricane season in the 20th century, the 53rd WRS flew more than 160 reconnaissance missions. Twelve were in the eye of Hurricane Opal, which struck the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 4.
WC-130s have enough fuel to fly up to 14 hours, but most hurricane reconnaissance missions last between 10 and 12 hours. About six of those hours are spent inside the hurricane.
There is an adrenaline rush when they're flying in the deadliest storms in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. But they do it mainly to save lives.
And although no Hurricane Hunter crew member would admit it on the record, silencing squeamish reporters is also a fringe benefit.