Keeping Airmen here safe is not a task taken lightly by the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing’s ground safety office.

"Our job is to prevent the loss of life or damage to government equipment," said Tech. Sgt. Clyde Lathon, 332nd AEW ground safety manager. "We are the Air Force equivalent to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."

To accomplish these goals, the two-person ground safety shop spends a portion of every day watching the daily operations of Airmen here.

"We are always out and about, watching ground operations on the base," said Tech. Sgt. Bob Brock, 332nd AEW noncommissioned officer in charge of ground safety. "We spend a lot of time monitoring operations on the fightline, looking at the aircraft ground operations. We also watch contracting operations to make sure they don't endanger Air Force people. We conduct mishap investigations. In addition, if someone is hurt at a Balad forward operations base, we will travel there to interview them if they are not medically evacuated here."

All this and more is done by the ground safety Airmen, who coordinate their programs down to the lowest levels with the assistance of unit safety representatives.

"Normally at a wing this size we would have more people to do this job," Sergeant Brock said. "Because there are only two of us, we rely heavily on unit safety representatives."

"Unit safety representatives are a vital part of the program,” Sergeant Lathon said. “They serve as an extra set of eyes and ears for us. We have been blessed with very good unit safety representatives this rotation; they helped bring the number of safety incidents down."

During the most recent air and space expeditionary force rotation, wing safety efforts reduced safety mishaps more than 50 percent compared to the previous rotation.

"I believe this is because we have been out of the office talking to people," Sergeant Lathon said. "We have been around the base asking people what they need to help make their work environment safer."

Despite the improved safety numbers seen during this rotation, Sergeant Lathon and Sergeant Brock asked those who are leaving not to become complacent and those who were arriving not to forget safety practices just because they are deployed.

"Most people who get hurt while deployed do so at the beginning or the end of a rotation," Sergeant Brock said. "People get into the mindset that while deployed the rules don't apply and start taking shortcuts they would not normally take. Nine times out of 10, when someone gets hurt, it was because they took a shortcut."