16APR2018 (12:27 UTC-07 Tango 06) 27 Farvardin 1397/30 Rajab 1439/01 Bing-Chen (3rd month) 4716
“I stressed after Hurricane Irma that we have to get our counterparts trained as well, because we’re going to need them. We knew that it was not enough to take on the mission with just the four of us.”-Master Sergeant Abea Balala, Florida Air National Guard
Army National Guard units are the typical bringers of disaster relief aid, unless roads are impassable and then the Air National Guard is used to airlift supplies into affected areas.
During Hurricane Irma relief efforts Florida Air National Guard Master Sergeant Abea Balala, and his four person team, noticed a major problem with the supplies they got from Army Guard units; while the supplies were packaged for transport by ground vehicles they were not in a condition to be shipped by air (or a lot of personnel had to be used to on & off-load one box at a time), meaning everything had to be re-palletized before being loaded on aircraft. This was a major cause of slow delivery times.
My experience in both the U.S. Air Force and the Army National Guard revealed that Air Force units do not have the manpower to quickly palletize a lot of stuff on short notice, but Army units do.
In this pic of Hurricane Harvey relief notice how National Guard personnel are ‘bucket brigade-ing’ supplies, one box at a time, off the C-130
The ‘higher-ups’ liked the suggestion of Master Sergeant Abea Balala, and last week the Florida National Guard conducted a week-long air transport pallet buildup and cargo preparation course for Army units: “On the Joint Operations side, we’ve been working with the Air side a lot more over the last two years than we ever had. They’re actually part of what is called the ‘Joint Support Group’ … and we work together to coordinate everything throughout hurricane seasons. It means better response, it means better use of our resources. It means if we pack things right and move things right, supplies are going to get to them faster, cheaper, and ultimately may save lives.”-Captain Daniel Munzner, Florida Army National Guard
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