U.S. Air Force conducts search and rescue exercise
Representatives from the U.S. Air Force are on their second visit to Belize. And this time around, the U.S. Operation Southern Partners is sharing tips on various procedures in aircraft maintenance, anti-terrorism, land and air navigation, fire-fighting and search and rescue missions. And today, O.S.P.—along with the Belize Defence Force and National Coast Guard—took to the skies and showed off valuable techniques in search and rescue exercise. News Five’s Duane Moody went on the mission and has this report.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Several U.S. military experts are currently collaborating with their counterparts and other various agencies on a wide range of activities that will hopefully strengthen partnerships. In their week long stay in the jewel, the visiting airmen will exchange techniques and procedures that can be used in search and rescue missions. The group will also offer community outreach programs.
Maj. Kenny Sierra, Dep. Commander, Operation Southern Partners
“We brought several subject matter experts. They will have two way communication with host nations and different areas from flight safety, from search and rescue, fire fighters; definitely a total. We are so excited. We are not teaching anybody, we are just sharing techniques. It’s a two way communication; we learn from you and you learn from us. It is a joint exercise. This is one of the first joint exercise that we’ve done—it’s as a matter of fact, the first joint exercise that we’re doing with Operation Southern Partners.”
Duane Moody
“And today, operation Southern Partners in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, the Belize Defence Force and the Belize National Coast Guard put together a mock exercise of a search and rescue mission.”
Major Kenny Sierra
“The C–130 is a J model is a state of the art—it’s one of the newest aircrafts in our inventory. It is a gas cockpit, it is state of the art. The mission is basically simple. They carry cargo, carry a person out from point A to point B. They do this type of drop personnel, they drop equipment as well.”
And then there was the deployment of the inflatable boat followed by the jump team…
Brandon Smith, Peer Rescue Man, Operation Southern Partners
“It’s called a rams package. Basically, we got a zodiac boat rolled up in a parachute package that we brought yesterday. We push it out of the back of the aircraft and parachute behind it and then de-rig it when we hit the water and float it up and then head back in. We do these kind of jumps as often as we can. We do a lot of training back home. The risks involved in this jump more than the rest is that we are doing it at a low altitude of about thirty-five hundred feet above the water so there’s not really a lot of time if we were to have a malfunction with our parachute, for us to correct that malfunction. So it is probably the most dangerous type of jump that we do but we train as often as we can to make sure everybody is proficient and we make sure not to make bad things happen.”
And according to Lieutenant Colonel Ganey Dortch, the B.D.F and the National Coast guard will gain valuable experiences from the exercises with U.S. Military.
Lieutenant Colonel Ganey Dortch, Chief of Staff, B.D.F.
“We’ll be benefiting in that we are looking at procedures where we can better equip at one point, we can better gain knowledge in terms of looking at procedures and making ourselves more efficient in where we conduct search and rescue missions in Belize. In the past, we have been engaged in several search and rescue where we have been successful; not because of having high tech equipment or state of the art equipment but as a result of local knowledge and the ability for us to coordinate with other authorities such as the Coastguard, the Special Boat Unit and even some civilian firms and NGOs who have actually pledged their report to search and rescue in Belize.”
Duane Moody
“Duane Moody reporting from the Philip Goldson International Airport for News Five.”
The forty-five plus crew members of the O.S.P. will visit seven countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America including Guyana, Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.
