Civil Engineers help bring light in the night

  • Published
  • By Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Gail E. Dale
  • Alaska Shield/Northern Edge Public Affairs
RED DEVIL, Alaska (AFPN) --  In this small village located 287 miles west of Anchorage, air travel is the sole means to enter and leave the town.

The 4,750-foot gravel airstrip lined with orange cones is essentially the town’s lifeline to the rest of the state. This lifeline has been significantly strengthened through the purchase and installation of a runway lighting system.

Red Devil, along with 62 other communities, qualified for a portable runway lighting system through the Rural Alaska Lighting Program because its airstrip was inadequate for nighttime use. The military helped get it there, and Airmen from the 611th Civil Engineer Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, installed the system and got it glowing.

The portable system is ideal for the quiet village because a fixed, in-ground system would be destroyed by ice sheeting from an adjacent hillside in the winter and flooding of the Kuskokwim River in the spring.

“Many small villages don’t have roads out of town, so if someone gets injured they’re stuck,” said Carl Siebe, the Alaska Department of Transportation acting deputy commissioner of aviation. “Once the system is in place, the lighting kit will allow an aircraft to land at night, load up a patient and take off to get that person medical attention.”

The deployment of the system took place Aug. 17 as part of Alaska Shield-Northern Edge 05, the largest homeland defense/homeland security exercise conducted in Alaska.

The exercise provides an opportunity to integrate local, state and federal government responses to simulated emergencies. For the purpose of the exercise, the real-world lighting system deployment was enacted as part of an exercise scenario in which Juneau’s runway lights were damaged by an earthquake.

A helicopter appeared through a haze of smoke, originating from a wildfire, to deliver the lighting equipment to the small village. Onboard were Airmen from the 611th CES.

Within minutes of touchdown, the Airmen assembled a metal ramp and offloaded the portable lighting system from the belly of the helicopter onto a small trailer.

An airport maintenance operator towed the trailer to the airstrip using an all-terrain vehicle. Approximately 40 minutes after offloading the system from the Blackhawk, the four-person CES team distributed the 40 lights around the runway. Even in the middle of the day, it was easy to see how useful the system would be during night hours as green lights glowed around the airstrip.

Deploying the system to a remote location not only benefited the small village, but the military as well.

“It’s a totally new environment for everyone involved,” said Tech Sgt. Gregory Eckroth, 611th civil engineer. “The training is more realistic when dealing with transporting and setting up the system in a remote location.”

The residents of Red Devil were thankful to have the new system.

“Red Devil doesn’t have a clinic, so in the event of an emergency at night we will have a more restful feeling knowing night operations are possible,” said Theodore Gordon, tribal administrator of the Red Devil traditional council. “We are extremely grateful to the military not only for bringing us the lighting system, but also for demonstrating how to set it up,” he said.