910th Airlift Wing answers call to help with Gulf cleanup

Staff report

VIENNA

Planes from the 910th Airlift Wing’s aerial spray unit are poised to make history by being the first Department of Defense unit to spray chemicals on an oil spill.

Two planes and two crews with a total of 33 members are standing by at Stennis International Airport in Mississippi awaiting orders for their role in fighting the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, caused when an oil rig exploded last week.

Two more of the airlift group’s C-130H Hercules cargo planes were cleared to go Friday but have not been given the green light to take off.

“We are ready to provide support to the ongoing emergency efforts,” said Col. Craig Peters, 910th Operations Group commander.

The 910th Airlift Wing has the Department of Defense’s only large-area, fixed-wing, aerial spray unit and mission.

The aerial spray capability is designed for and has been used for larvicide and insect eradication to provide vegetation control at bombing ranges and to disperse oil slicks.

Lt. Colonel Rich Elder, commander of the 910’s Operations Support squadron, said of the spraying: “It’s an operation for which we train to do.”

Master Sgt. Bob Barko, 910th spokesman, said the C-130s from the Youngstown Air Reserve Station will skim over the slick and spray a chemical that works like dishwater detergent. It encapsulates the oil and breaks it down so it can be handled naturally by the ocean, he said.

Elder said that he did not know the chemical makeup of the material that is used to stop the spill. But he said that it is designed to make the oil sink in the water where microorganisms make the oil inert before it reaches the shore.

The material is not sprayed from tanks but from a hose on the left side of the plane from containers in the plane.

Elder said that the planes can “disburse 75,000 gallons a day.”

Officials estimated that the rig is leaking 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day.