Exercise Grindstone tests Kentucky Air Guard’s response to a major earthquake

  • Published
  • By Dale Greer
  • 123rd Airlift Wing Public Affairs
PADUCAH, Ky. --  The Kentucky Air National Guard staged a major earthquake-response exercise here last week, deploying more than 30 Airmen and three aircraft to establish a regional cargo hub, process relief supplies, provide fuel for helicopter operations and manage aeromedical evacuations at two airports.

The Airmen — augmented by pilots from the Civil Air Patrol, Soldiers from the Kentucky Army National Guard and over a dozen employees of the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management — successfully executed eight key tasks, said Col. Nick Miles, director of Air Operations at Joint Force Headquarters, Kentucky National Guard.

Those tasks included aerial assessments of infrastructure damage, the provision of essential airlift capability in Paducah and the coordination of patient movements across the state for medical care.

“We accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish to support life-sustaining operations,” Miles said at the conclusion of the three-day event. “We also learned a lot that we’ll incorporate moving forward to make our execution even better next time.

“The planning for his exercise has been almost a year and a half in the making,” he added, “so we really appreciate the hard work that everyone put into making it a success.”

The disaster-response simulation, called Exercise Grindstone, began May 13 with an 8-magnitude earthquake centered near Oceola, Arkansas, in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The zone is the most active seismic area in the Eastern United States and covers parts of five states, including Western Kentucky. According to a study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a 7.7 earthquake here would displace more than 700,000 people from their homes and cause over $400 billion in property damage. Many roads and bridges would be impassable, cutting off emergency ground response.

Within an hour of the notional earthquake, the Kentucky Air Guard activated its Air Operations Branch at the State Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort. The AOB, whose primary function is to coordinate emergency-response aviation assets across the Commonwealth, tasked the Civil Air Patrol to fly aerial assessments of damage across Western Kentucky, a process that took about three hours. In the meantime, the Kentucky Air Guard’s 123rd Airlift Wing, based in Louisville, dispatched a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft carrying five combat controllers from the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron.

Those special warfare Airmen parachuted into Barkley Regional Airport here about seven hours after the earthquake first hit, while their C-130J returned to Louisville, operating under the assumption that the airport’s runways had been damaged and couldn't support aircraft landings.

Once on the ground, the controllers found a notionally inoperative airfield with no electricity, no air traffic control and an inaccessible supply of aviation fuel. They immediately started an assessment of the field’s ability to support flight operations, including whether the pavement was suitable for heavy cargo aircraft. With the assessment complete about two hours later, they notified the AOB that Barkley was ready to receive follow-on aircraft with more Airmen, equipment and supplies.

Three C-130Js departed Louisville within the hour, carrying 14 members of the Kentucky Air Guard’s 123rd Contingency Response Group, an all-terrain forklift, an R-11 refueling truck and all the support gear needed to operate a cargo hub. They arrived in Paducah about an hour later as the five original special tactics Airmen provided air traffic control using the radios they carry on their backs.

After the aircraft were parked, the controllers handed operations over to the arriving group, which began offloading equipment to stand up an aerial port. The mission was effectively operational within about 11 hours of the earthquake, ready to receive planes carrying food, water and relief workers; and to coordinate the evacuation of survivors needing housing or medical care.

Before those C-130Js departed for Louisville, the contingency response Airmen conducted an unusual but essential procedure called Specialized Fueling Operations. SFO is a key capability that overcomes a number of complex factors, according to Lt. Col. Hunter Williams, director of Air Plans at Joint Force Headquarters, Kentucky National Guard.

Because the earthquake had notionally destroyed many of the roads in the region, helicopters would become the primary means of access to remote areas, Williams explained. However, the earthquake also disabled the ability of local airfields to provide aviation fuel for helicopters, which have a relatively short range. They would need a source of fuel.

Enter the C-130J aircraft, and the R-11 refueling truck that the Kentucky Air Guard airlifted with them to Paducah.

Under SFO, Airmen from the Contingency Response Group offloaded fuel from one aircraft’s tanks and into an R-11 refueling truck, even as the C-130J’s propellers were still spinning to prevent aircraft downtime on the small ramp. That effectively turned a C-130J hauling cargo into a makeshift tanker aircraft, providing fuel stores on site to support helicopter operations.

“The first priority of the exercise was to bring fuel so we could surge rescue aviation assets quickly,” Williams said. “SFO enabled that in a way nothing else can.”

Capt. Matt Hourigan agreed.

“The airlift of an R-11 fuel truck and its employment immediately in the field for SFO was big deal,” said Hourigan, the wing’s installation deployment officer. “That was unprecedented in the state of Kentucky and is a huge logistics multiplier.”

Over the next two days, Kentucky C-130Js airlifted pallets of water from Louisville to help serve an estimated 500,000 citizens who now lacked potable water. Those pallets were offloaded by the Air Guard’s aerial porters and passed on to Soldiers from the Army Guard’s 1792nd Combat Sustainment Support Battalion for ground distribution. A group of four Airmen also traveled to Murray-Calloway County Airport in Murray, Kentucky, to assess that airfield’s ability to support evacuations and other relief operations.

While there, one of the Airmen was notionally injured in an accident, requiring the Kentucky Air Guard’s 123rd Medical Group to mobilize a Critical Care Air Transport Team from Louisville. The team — comprised of three nurses, a physician assistant and a medical doctor —arrived via C-130J within two hours, and stabilized the patient for air transport to a trauma center.

All throughout the exercise, the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management was tracking the statewide transportation of multiple earthquake casualties, arranging for aeromedical flights and ambulance transport to available hospitals.

“That was really impressive to see,” Miles said. “They took the bones of this exercise and just ran with it, moving patients all over the state. I think the taxpayer will really benefit from that experience going forward.”

Williams noted the complex nature of large-scale disaster-response events, requiring interaction between civil and military participants at the local, state and federal level. For that reason, Grindstone also included participation from county emergency managers, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the FAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It’s extremely important that the Kentucky Air Guard continue to build on how we integrate with our joint partner in the state, the Kentucky Army National Guard, as well as Emergency Management and a host of other local, state and federal entities,” he said.

“Exercises like this help us understand where we are as a state for responding in a joint interagency fashion to an emergency situation, when the people of the Commonwealth need our help.”

The last major earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone measured 6.7 and occurred in 1895 near Charleston, Missouri. A series of three earthquakes believed to be magnitude 7 or higher occurred in 1811 and 1812, temporarily changing the flow of the Mississippi River and causing structural damage as far away as Cincinnati. Those were followed by thousands of smaller-magnitude earthquakes over the next several months.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that a repeat of the 1811-12 earthquakes has a 7 to 10 percent probability in the next 50 years. An earthquake of 6.0 or greater is rated at 25 to 40 percent.