ROCHESTER, N.Y. – New York Army National Guard Soldiers completed their Florida mission helping respond to damage caused by Hurricane Ian.
Two helicopters and 11 Soldiers from Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 126th Aviation, and the 642nd Aviation Maintenance Battalion deployed to Florida Sept. 28 in response to an Emergency Management Assistance Compact request from Florida.
The CH-47F Chinooks, based at the Army Aviation Flight Facility in Rochester, can carry 36 people or over 46,000 pounds of cargo and fly at 190 miles per hour.
The aircraft took two days to make the journey. They arrived at the Fort Myers International airport Sept. 29, less than 30 hours after Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida near Fort Myers with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.
The two New York aircraft moved “a bunch of search and rescue teams,” Florida state troopers, police and sheriff’s deputies, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation agents and Florida National Guard Soldiers Sept. 30-Oct. 5, according to Capt. Jonathan Peralta, the mission officer in charge.
The New Yorkers and aircraft from the other states focused on moving people, equipment and supplies to Sanibel Island, Peralta said.
When the hurricane struck the Florida coast, sections of the 3-mile-long causeway that linked the island to the mainland were destroyed. The Army Guard aircraft were used to bring in people and critical equipment, he said.
The CH-47 crews moved Ford F-150 pickup trucks and Explorer SUVs, as well as gator-type vehicles, military Humvees and skid steer work vehicles, Peralta said.
The Ford Explorer and F-150s were just backed up into the aircraft, as were the gators.
The skid steers, small single-person work vehicles, were loaded into shipping containers carried across the channel to the island slung underneath the CH-47s.
A dozen humvees were also sling-loaded to the island — two by the New York helicopters and 10 by other aircraft.
Pilots had to fly the sling loads on a specific route so that if they had to drop the loads for safety reasons, they wouldn’t land on houses.
The New York helicopters also transported two pallets of water, cell phone communications equipment and 65,000 pounds of cargo.
The Soldiers typically worked 12-hour days. Peralta said Florida National Guard ensured their New York counterparts were as comfortable as possible and well-fed. As the week went on, they moved out of an aircraft hangar and into local hotels.
Peralta said maintenance personnel faced a challenge when one of the Chinooks hit 120 hours of flying time, requiring major maintenance checks.
This level of maintenance is usually conducted inside a hangar and takes about a day. In Florida, the maintenance team had to work outside in the heat, so they were rotated into an air-conditioned building to give them a break.