Travis sends more help Haiti's way

  • Published
  • By Nick DeCicco
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Nineteen Airmen deployed Jan. 23 from Travis as part of the Air Force's ongoing humanitarian relief response to Haiti.

The members of the base's 615th Contingency Response Wing were headed not to the Caribbean nation hit Jan. 12 with a 7.0 earthquake, but to San Isidro Air Base in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

From there, the Travis Airmen will assist 46 other members of the 615th CRW already who are at the airport, making it a 24-hour operation.

The Airmen who departed for San Isidro will pitch in there because the airport in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, is overloaded, said Col. John Lipinski, wing commander for the 615th CRW.
The deployers will help load and unload aircraft as well as provide air-traffic control and vehicle maintenance. Lipinski said the airmen come from a "vast array" of duties under the 615th CRW's purview.

Lipinski said the Airmen are expected to be there at least a month.

Before departure, crewmembers prepared in different ways. A newlywed couple spent much of their time together, while other Airmen played cards.

The mission of the 615th CRW is rapid response to anywhere in the globe within 24 hours. Similar situations have taken the wing's members to Afghanistan as well as the southern United States for the Ike and Gustav hurricanes in 2008.

"This is what we train for," said Tech. Sgt. Andy Bergan, a unit deployment manager with the 615th CRW.

Though he typically keeps track of personnel data, making sure the wing's members are prepared to deploy, Sergeant Bergan will instead be one of the Airmen helping load and unload aircrafts at San Isidro. It marks his first deployment since a 2005 trip to Iraq, he said.

"I've seen everyone else going, so it's very exciting to get to go out and do my job again," he said.

Sergeant Bergan hails from Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, so he said he was glad to be part of a group headed to that region of the world.

"It's exciting to help other Islanders," he said. "It's a bad thing what happened in Haiti."

Also shipping out was Tech. Sgt. Phil Patterson, a hazardous material program manager with the 615th CRW.

Sergeant Patterson described the wing's mission as "Delta and FedEx wrapped in one, plus so much more," saying that making a deployment in a humanitarian capacity was an obligation he was happy to fulfill.

"We make it happen," Sergeant Patterson said. "That's what America's all about -- helping people."