McGuire unit returns from Hurricane Rita mission

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Erick Saks
  • 305th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MCGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE, N.J. (AFPN) --  Twenty members of McGuire Air Force Base’s 621st Contingency Response Wing deployed to Beaumont, Texas, Sept. 22 to assist hurricane evacuation efforts for more than 1,900 people at the Southeast Texas Regional Airport.

During the vital few hours the Airmen were on the ground, they helped move about 700 non-medical evacuees and 1,240 patients to safety.

“This team of 20 guys went down there and did things that I never would have imagined possible,” said Capt. Justin Niederer, the contingency response group element commander. “We got down there to find hundreds of people sitting on litters with doctors over them just waiting for airlift to get them out of the area. It was an eye-opener when I first walked into the terminal and saw that.”

The 621st CRW is one of two specialized wings in the Air Force responsible for training and rapidly deploying personnel responsible for quickly opening airfields in remote areas around the globe. In Texas, the unit took advantage of its expertise to carry people to safety prior to the arrival of Hurricane Rita.

While hurricane evacuations are not at the forefront of the CRW’s mission, Captain Niederer said it is a mission they are ideally suited to handle.

“(Responding to wartime situations) is inherent in the job we train for, but… we (also) respond to whatever pops up that maybe no one else can respond to,” he said. “Humanitarian efforts are actually a big part of our operations. We had teams that went out supporting Katrina, and many of them are still in New Orleans helping to clean up. We also had teams that went over for tsunami relief in the Pacific, and we had teams that responded to the hurricanes in Florida last year. You name it, if they need cargo or people moved or the manpower to move it, they call us.”

Before Captain Niederer’s team received the call to leave for Texas, they had already begun preparations for a possible deployment.

“We had been building a team to prepare for hurricane response after the fact,” said the captain. “We thought we’d be moving out on (Sept. 25), but (on Sept. 22), they determined that they needed to move some people ahead of time. I was on the plane within an hour and 15 minutes of being notified.”

Upon arrival, members of the 621st CRW were greeted by Army and Air Force aeromedical teams, who had already begun evacuation work.

“There were already evacuations in place,” said Captain Niederer. “When we came in, we took over the non-medical evacuation operation. We worked with the medevac unit to coordinate all airlift, ensuring things ran smoothly on the ground.”

With the mission completed, the Airmen prepared to leave. The team departed the Texas airport just before Hurricane Rita arrived.

“We ended up leaving Beaumont (Sept. 24) at about 1 p.m. as we were starting to get heavy winds and rain,” said Captain Niederer. “The weather reports we got said about three inches of rain per hour was only about five minutes away from our location.”

They returned to McGuire AFB about 24 hours after they originally left it – on very little sleep, but proud of their accomplishment.