Demands of relief effort test Elmendorf team's patience
adn.com
TATABOLINE BRANT
IN INDONESIA
(Published: January 16, 2005)
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- For nine days, the Elmendorf Air Force Base crew stationed here has been working around the clock to deliver food, medicine and other goods to people left homeless by the Dec. 26 tsunami. Most of it has been flown to Banda Aceh, the coastal city in the hardest-hit region.
Some of the Air Force crew members are sick to their stomachs and still come to work in the blazing sun and over-90-degree heat for 12-hour shifts, sweating away inside the bellies of C-130s as they ready the workhorse cargo planes for their next trips.
Several of the Alaska flight crews working here recently got home from deployments to Uzbekistan, where they were flying support for military operations in Afghanistan. They'll probably return for another mission.
Here, the flight crews juggle mandatory rest time with a wildly unpredictable flight schedule for the chance to fly into a chaotically busy airport with no radar and unload tons of supplies, sometimes by hand.
No one complains in any true sense of the word. To the person, the airmen seem truly humbled and proud to be part of it. The effort is enough to make the most cynical American feel patriotic, but Friday -- Friday was the day the tired crew's patience was put to the test.
In military lingo, you might say it was the invasion of the "NGO PAX" -- nongovernmental organization passengers.
Around 50 people showed up Friday at the crew's modest headquarters here, on an Indonesian air force base, looking for a free lift to Banda Aceh.
The Elmendorf team, which is flying into the ruined city on average three times a day, routinely works with the Indonesian government and the U.S. Embassy to get high-priority passengers aboard its cargo planes on a space available basis.
But Friday was something different. People kept showing up and demanding things, acting like they owned the place.
It started around noon. The Air Force team was in its usual rush to get the planes and supplies in the air. Numerous people were talking on cell phones, looking at maps, asking about aircraft parts, confirming landing times, trying to set up the next day's flights. An airman sat on the floor of the crew room looking over maps, putting together a weather briefing for the pilots. Another searched through a manual for the answer to an aircraft problem.
Several Indonesian news reporters as well as Indonesian military personnel wanted to be flown into Banda Aceh, it turned out. So did a number of aid workers and Embassy officials. Some of them had pallets of supplies they wanted to take with them.
Almost no one called to confirm ahead of time when the flights were leaving or if there was room for them.
When word got out that there were a lot of passengers, a guy with an "Uplift" T-shirt cornered the operation commander, Lt. Col. Gary Gottschall, as he was hanging up his cell phone. "Are we on the first flight?" he asked, explaining that he had been waiting for several hours.
The airmen were trying to reconfigure the cargo on multiple planes to make everyone fit, but then one of the planes was taken out of commission while its crew tried to bum a part from New Zealand forces, also helping here.
Relief workers followed Gottschall around. People with nothing to do with the military operation crowded into the small planning room where the flight crews were trying to prepare for their trips.
Gottschall stood among 15 people in the room, all of them talking. He had a cell phone to one ear and his finger in the other.
"Everybody! Quiet in here!" a crew member shouted. "If you need to talk, please go outside."
The nonmilitary people left the planning room and headed for the crew room. One older man leaned against the couch where exhausted maintenance guys, their shirts soaked in sweat, were taking a short break. The man complained to another civilian: "First they said we'll be on the first flight, then the second flight ..."
An older woman with large black glasses walked in. She asked about lunch and then helped herself to the airmen's sandwiches. Another guest dug in to the team's limited supply of bottled water.
A few minutes later, a tall, older man asked politely: "Excuse me, do you have any insecticide?" He explained that someone in his party had just arrived unprepared for the conditions in Banda Aceh. "I was told you guys have a big stock."
People filtered back into the planning room. Gottschall escaped with his cell phone to the bathroom in the back of the office, not the most pleasant space in the operation. He emerged a few minutes later, motioning to one of his mission planners, 1st Lt. Doug McHam.
"Hey, Doug, come here a second," Gottschall said. They disappeared into the bathroom.
When they emerged, a young aid worker seized upon Gottschall, anxious to talk about her cargo. They exited out a back door. The airmen, meanwhile, were doing their best not to let the chaos get to them. Someone lightened the mood by posting a yellow sticky note on the bathroom door that read, "CC's Conference Room," meaning the commander's.
Gottschall and the aid worker returned to the office, and he made some more phone calls. A man in a Project Hope shirt hovered around them, saying something to the woman, who told him a few minutes later: "Get out of here."
Project Hope walked away, telling his comrades in the crew room: "It's changed again. We're all on different flights."
The bug dope man interrupted Gottschall to ask where he should take his bags. Gottschall patiently told him.
The people in the planning room shut the door. A short time later, a sign appeared on the entrance: "OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY! Please, no passengers beyond this point. There is an additional latrine on the south end of the building beneath the stairwell."
Two planes finally took off, many passengers going with them. The third plane remained grounded. Several pilots, navigators and engineers were sitting in the crew room when the Uplift guy walked in with the Project Hope man, visibly upset.
"This is pathetic," the Uplift man said, grabbing his bags off the floor. "We're out of here." The two stormed off. The airmen shook their heads.
For the first time all afternoon, the headquarters were relatively quiet. Gottschall emerged from the planning room looking a little worn out and headed out the front door for another conversation about cargo. His crews sympathized with him when he was gone.
"All these organizations, they all think they're the most important," Gottschall said, "but we have to draw the line somewhere."
Reporter Tataboline Brant and photographer Marc Lester are traveling in Indonesia with crews from Elmendorf Air Force Base helping with tsunami relief efforts. They can be reached at tbrant@adn.com and mlester@adn.com. |
