 The motto of the Air Force Reserve is Ready Now, ready to provide immediate equipment and personnel in any military buildup, but also prepared to lend a hand in any natural or man-made disaster. Whether it's dropping fire suppressant on raging brush fires that threaten life and homes, rescuing people trapped in a disastrous hotel fire, plucking them from the molten eruption of a fierce volcano, or taking the pulse and tracking the direction of a massive coastal hurricane, Air Force Reservists make giant contributions to alleviate suffering and demonstrate that their professional skills have important peacetime applications. I'm Gil Nyer with a profile report on some of these stories. Airman Magazine and all the national news media highlighted the spectacular eruption of Washington's Mount St. Helens and the human drama that accompanied it. 61 people were rescued by the Air Force Reserves 304th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron from nearby Portland International Airport. Technical Sergeant Charles Eck, an Air Force Reserve para-rescuman who was on the scene at Mount St. Helens, is shown here with one of the families he helped bring out. He will never forget that experience. Charlie, where were you when Mount St. Helens blew up and how did you respond? Our squadron was having their weekend monthly drill at the base. I was at the para-rescue sections. We got a call from operations to tell us that we should get our gear ready to get on the choppers as soon as we could. We were on the choppers and up on the mountain within an hour and a half from the time the mountain erupted. What was the scene like when you arrived on the mountain? It was awesome. The trees were blowing down like matchsticks. The mountain was spewing ash and steam 60,000 feet in the air. It was generating its own thunderstorm. There was lightning bolts 20,000 feet. There was just devastation everywhere. Were your rescue efforts successful? Yes, we took out about 61 people for saves. The mud and ash must have made things very difficult. Tell us about some of the problems you encountered. Well, when you have to go over the trees in some of the areas where the trees were still standing, the ash on the trees would throw up a cloud of ash and block the view of the helicopter. So we'd have to do about a 200 foot hover and hoist down to the people that we found. And it caused quite a bit of problems because you couldn't see the ground where you were hovering to and being hoisted to. I guess the maintenance people had quite a problem too. They did a super job and every time we'd come back they'd wash down the engines completely and turn them around for the next sortie on up to the mountain. They'd really put in a lot of hours and really did some fine jobs. Were any of your rescues particularly memorable, such as the Moore family who we saw in Airman Magazine? That was an interesting mission. The PJ that was on the ground was Richard Harder. He was down first and it took us probably an hour and a half to get back into the area to put me down to him because of the ash was still flowing around the air and we couldn't get into the valley where he was. Charlie, thank you for bringing us that update on the 304th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron. Aerial rescue at Mount St. Helens, another example of the Air Force Reserve's continuing readiness to respond in the tradition of the motto of the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service that others may live. In November 1980 Southern California suffered the worst fire season in its history. The president declared it a national disaster area after more than 100,000 acres and hundreds of structures burned as winds drove flames into housing areas and woodlands alike and yet the damage would have been worse without a fire suppression unit used by the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard known as MAFs. Charles Coval, U.S. Forest Service Fire Suppression expert, helped coordinate the operation. Charlie, what is MAFs and how does it work? MAFs is an acronym for Modular Airborne Firefighting Systems. It's a specially designed system with tanks for retardant and compressed air that is placed in the tail section of a C-130. Upon arriving over a fire, the compressed gas causes the retardant to be released through tubes in the tail section and a fire line path is then formed. How significant is the contribution of the C-130s to the overall Forest Service Firefighting effort? It's very significant. The C-130 has a special capability of laying a fire retardant path in excess of a half a mile. There's a lot of hills, wind, smoke, a lot of hazards. What's the biggest problem? The biggest problem is the wind. The C-130s can fly in winds up to about 40 miles per hour over mountainous terrain and the fire itself creates its own wind causing wind shears and the pilots have to be very careful of those. I know you were on the Southern California fire lines day and night. How successful were the C-130s in helping to stop those fires? They were very successful. On several of the fires they saved some homes and aided the firefighters in getting in to build the fire lines and we got a lot of calls from the community. People were very grateful of course the Forest Service was too. It saved us a lot of money. Whenever a major forest fire threatens life and property the U.S. Air Force Reserve is trained and ready to give the U.S. Forest Service a firefighting hand. Nature's show of force in a volcanic eruption is perhaps matched by the destructive fury of a major hurricane. Allen, which raged across the Caribbean in August of 1980 causing an estimated 250 deaths and property damage in the millions was such a hurricane. Air Force Reserve storm trackers from the 920th Weather Reconnaissance Group at Keisler Air Force Base, Mississippi measure the intensity and plot the direction of these fearsome storms. Weather officer Captain Dave McIntosh has frequently penetrated into the eye of hurricanes to provide vital data to the National Hurricane Center near Miami. Dave, what's it like flying into the eye of a hurricane? Well actually every penetration into the eye of a hurricane is different. Depending upon the hurricane the ride can be very smooth or it can be very rough. What's your role as the weather officer? My primary responsibility is to gather certain weather information as we are flying into the eye of a hurricane as well as in the eye itself and send this information back to the National Hurricane Center in Miami where they can analyze the data that I've sent. Well how is the data used? Well it's put into a computer and from this the computer can plot what has happened in the hurricane and come up with a forecast of the most likely path that the hurricane will take. Are there any new techniques being used in storm tracking? Yes there are. In fact NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has provided the funds for us to install the latest electronic equipment on our aircraft that we can gather the data very rapidly and using a satellite data link send this information to the ground much more rapidly than we can at present time. But don't satellites perform the same function basically that you do? They perform basically the same function but they don't have the accuracy. A satellite may give you accuracy within 60 miles. On the other hand we provide data within five miles sometimes much better than that. Captain McIntosh it sounds as if your Air Force Reserve job is very satisfying. Yes it is because it gives us the opportunity of very accurately determining the position of hurricanes which allows the forecaster much greater reliability in determining how many people to evacuate and which people to evacuate. So we do have a lot of satisfaction in this. So even in an age of satellites the human factor remains very important in keeping track of a storm. Yes mainly because of the accuracy that we can provide. Dave thank you for updating us on the 920th Weather Reconnaissance Group which performs more than 70 percent of U.S. hurricane tracking. While Air Force Reservists were successfully battling fires in Southern California during the last weeks of November 1980 other Air Force Reservists from the 302nd Special Operations Squadron at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona were called upon to rescue people trapped in the burning MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Captain Mike Martin was the commander of one of three reserve helicopter crews who responded to that situation. Mike how did you happen to be at Nellis Air Force Base and how did you respond to this situation? Our unit had deployed three aircraft to Nellis to participate in red flight exercise at the time. Months long war games exercise. At the time of the fire on Friday morning most of us were in the B.O.Q. in crew rest. Our commander received the request for assistance through the command post and we launched immediately I would say it took about 30 to 35 minutes to get airborne and it's a short five-minute flight to the MGM Grand Hotel. And what did you find when you got to the fire scene? As we approached the hotel of course we saw a lot of smoke billowing up in a mushroom cloud and we orbited the area talked to the Las Vegas Police helicopter on the scene and tried to figure out how to get the remaining people that were stranded on the balconies off the balconies. We couldn't just simply lower the force penetrator down from our hoist because of the balcony overhang. We didn't really know what to do at that time and the problem was solved by Master Sergeant Bill Reynolds. Bill could you describe the technique you used for rescue at the MGM Grand? Yes, surely. The force penetrator attached to our hoist cable is a three-seated fold-out seat arrangement that can lift two people. At this point I was lowered on the hoist and with a throw rope one of our tie-down ropes tied to the penetrator and threw it to the people on the balcony they in turn pulled me over to the balcony and then we proceeded with the rescue from that point of hoisting the survivors off one at a time. Bill, can you tell us something about how the people who were trapped on those balconies reacted when they saw your helicopter approaching? Well, very relieved to be stating it mildly. They were very glad to see us and I do believe that possibly our presence with the hoist capability prevented more people from jumping from the balconies. Thank you, Bill. Mike, isn't it a little bit unusual for a unit like yours, a special operations squadron, to be so well trained in rescue techniques? No, not at all. Many of the combat techniques that we practice daily are certainly applicable to rescue. In fact, over the years we have been credited with saving dozens of lives and using techniques just like we did at the MGM Grand. In fact, in the case of the hoist and the force penetrator, this is a technique that we practice almost daily and the fellows are very familiar with it and it's a very common thing for us to use. Bill, did you ride up the hoist with the rescued survivors each time? No, I didn't. My decision at the site was one at a time and after the fifth person was off then I went up by myself. So you were alone on that balcony for a while? Yes and you're there all by yourself that wasn't a very good feeling. I was glad to see the hoist come back down for me. Bill, that's really incredible. Thanks to all of you in the 302nd Special Operations Squadron and your contribution to the readiness of the United States Air Force Reserve. Thanks to all the members of the 302nd, that was really incredible. This is reflected in the appreciation of all the Air Force Reserve from the Chief on down and the Chief himself is on hand now at the Pentagon. It's a pleasure to welcome Major General Richard Bodycomb. Thank you, Gil. That's my privilege to be here this morning to be able to talk to you about the Air Force Reserve. Sir, 1980 was a year of many unique Air Force Reserve achievements, particularly in the area of disaster relief, as we've just seen. I'm sure you're proud of the achievements of all your units. What do you see as the greatest challenge for the decade of the 80s? Gil, that's a tough question to answer. I'd like to say that it is going to be difficult to continue our momentum. We've got this force at a very high peak now and then we've got to keep it rolling and conversion is facing us in a number of units. Conversions are difficult times for reservists. You have to learn new airplanes and new skills and we often turn over the unit. Our problem simply is going to be a recruit continue to recruit up to the level of full strength and also to continue to retain retain the very finest people in our unit. Thank you, General Bodycomb. I'm sure the 80s will continue to provide important opportunities for all Air Force Reservists to demonstrate their ability to meet any challenge. They're involved in many other humanitarian assistance programs supporting their local communities. An actual jumbo jet crash in Florida some years ago led to emergency exercises that realistically test disaster response to similar potential mishaps at Miami's International Airport. Air Force Reserve rescue units are training to support our nation's space program assuring that if an emergency arises the men and women who seek new space frontiers are safe in any contingency. Astronauts have the confidence that should the need develop skilled Air Force Reserve rescue personnel are poised to assist. Whether or not they have rescue in their mission all Air Force Reserve units stand ready to assist in any emergency. Whenever needed anywhere in the world the Air Force Reserve is indeed ready now.