Guard group fueled for border
Members of the Spokane-based 141st Air Refueling Wing deployed Monday on a mission to build a field hospital, not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in Nogales, Ariz.
The 16 civil engineers and medical personnel with the Air National Guard Unit are the first Washington Guard members to take part in Operation Jump Start, President Bush’s plan to supplement U.S.-Mexico border security with 6,000 National Guard members until additional U.S. Border Patrol agents can be hired and trained to prevent illegal crossings.
“It’s an important mission for the states in the border region. There’s been an identified shortage of people to perform the mission down there,” said 141st commander Col. Gary T. Magonigle.
Magonigle said he’s uncertain how many more Washington National Guard members will be sent to the border.
The National Guard in Washington and other states is being asked to perform more missions now than ever before. Border support is just the latest job added to a list that includes assisting with natural disaster relief, homeland security and overseas missions in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The Spokane Guard members will stay in Arizona for two weeks, setting up and temporarily operating the hospital, which will provide first aid and basic medical care to other troops serving along the border.
The 16 had to squeeze past pallet after pallet of medical equipment and other supplies Monday afternoon as they boarded a KC-135 refueling tanker for their Arizona-bound flight. They were taking the kind of equipment you might find in any minor emergency clinic, plenty of treatments for insect bites, sprained ankles, dehydration and other common ailments.
“It’s one of the first times we’ve deployed this medical element for real tasks, operating to provide emergency health care for military personnel,” said Lt. Col. Wally Painter with the 141st’s medical unit.
The unit is setting up a SPEARR hospital, short for small, portable, expeditionary, aeromedical, rapid response.
Another 17 Washington Air National Guard members with the 252nd Combat Communications Group based in Camp Murray, near Tacoma, also deployed Monday to Arizona to set up a radio communications network. Some of those Guard members are also from Spokane.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said in June that she would not force Washington Guard members to deploy to the border, but would allow volunteers to go there.
No Idaho National Guard troops have been deployed to the southwest for border-related jobs since the launch of Operation Jump Start.
Master Sgt. Dave Thurman, with the 141st, is charged with overseeing the electrical work at the hospital. Thurman worked along the border before Operation Jump Start, making repairs to the wall and fencing along the border near San Diego.
So far, most of the Guard members working along the border hail from the Southwestern states they are patrolling – Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. But other states, including Maryland and North Carolina, have sent Guard units to the border.