Airmen destroy UXOs risen from the desert depths

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Nathan Gallahan
  • 407th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  Plums of smoke rose in the sky as Airman from the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron used C4 to detonate 13 piles of ordnance here March 26.

The ordnance was discovered over a 159 acres area of the base by a six-Airman explosive ordnance disposal team and six augmentees.

The team looks for and uncovers dangerous items such as unexploded ordnance, shrapnel, foreign fuses, rocket warheads and artillery projectiles.

"The number one reason we do this is for safety on the flightline," said Master Sgt. Curtis Keel,  the EOD flight chief, deployed from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. "It protects construction crews building or maintaining facilities as well as aircraft arriving and departing the area."

Each pile contained about five or six UXOs around each marker flag, said Staff Sgt. Molly Whitehurst, the 407th ECES EOD team chief, who is deployed from Kadena Air Base, Japan.

This isn't the first time an EOD team here has swept the base for dangerous items, Sergeant Keel said. When he first convoyed here from Kuwait in March of 2003 they spent a month clreaing the flightline and base of UXOs.

"After Desert Storm, Saddam Hussein's regime left this place a complete and total mess because it was so far into the no fly zone -- he just abandoned it," he said. "There were blown up vehicles all up and down the runway and all over the roads when we first got here (in 2003). The place was saturated with debris and unexploded ordnance. We brought 400 pounds of C4 with us, went through that and whatever the British (coalition forces) brought with them in 30 days."

Over the years teams have discovered and cleared hundreds of assorted unexploded ordnance at 30 separate sites.

Some may question why five years into Operation Iraqi Freedom the EOD teams are still discovering more UXOs; Airmen here are walking all over the answer.

"It's the sand," said Master Sgt. Howard Hartz, the 407th Expeditionary Medical Squadron bioenvironmental engineering technician, who volunteered to help search through the UXO fields.

"It's constantly moving and shifting here, because of the wind and soft clay underneath," said Sergeant Hartz, who is deployed from Niagara Falls Joint Air Reserve Station, N.Y.

"A lot of these items may have been driven into the earth as far as the water table, and slowly over time they just rise back up," Sergeant Whitehurst said.

"This is a constant ongoing effort," she said. "Items will keep rising to the surface for years, and by constantly searching for these dangers we hope to one day have this area cleared as much as possible, so when it is turned back over to the Iraqis it will be as safe as we can possibly make it for them."

Comment on this story (comments may be published on Air Force Link)

View the comments/letters page