THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170279
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 104 lines
They find missing persons.
They find aircraft wreckage when no one else can.
They head quickly to emergency scenes and take charge, handling tragedy with the compassion of fellow citizens and the calculated cool of professional soldiers.
They are the 43rd Virginia Volunteer Search and Rescue Company, commanded by Capt. J.E. Saunders, whose day job is with the Virginia Beach police force.
And they have just added a new tool to their arsenal.
Saunders, a 51-year-old man with a trim blond mustache showing the onset of gray, was sure parachutes could help the 43rd better perform their mission of ``getting in there quick.''
Sunday afternoon at Chesapeake Municipal Airport, the unit showed the public and officials from Chesapeake General Hospital, which helps fund the 43rd, what the chutes could do.
Five men clad in orange jumpsuits and white helmets leapt from an airplane, coasted through 5,000 feet of air and landed neatly on a grassy drop zone. They gathered their brightly colored parachutes and lit a smoke marker. The airplane returned and dropped a package of supplies. The supplies, slowed by three parachutes, landed with a thud.
In less than three minutes, the demonstration was over.
The men were on target. So was the gear.
It looked good to Saunders.
``I've been on missions where the location was so remote it would take six, 12, even 15 hours to get (rescuers) in,'' said Saunders. ``The sooner you can get people in, the better.''
In Hampton Roads, a search in the Dismal Swamp might employ the 43rd, Saunders said. The jump capability will also be useful outside Hampton Roads, in Virginia and North Carolina. Swamps, mountains and forests present geographical challenges that could be overcome by jumping in rescuers.
``There might be rough terrain far from roads,'' he said. ``All you need is a small clearing, and you can get a parachute team in.''
Saunders jumped for the first time as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in 1963. He began jumping again in 1988, and recently came up with the idea to apply Airborne doctrines to the 43rd's brand of search and rescue.
The idea was borrowed from ``smokejumping,'' a practice in which firefighters are parachuted into remote areas to battle forest fires.
``If we want to put these people in real quick, we can put 'em in by parachuting and get a bigger team in than we could by helicopter and they can carry their own equipment,'' said Saunders. ``The more I thought about it, and looking at some of the crashes we've had in North Carolina and Virginia on top of mountains, I thought, `How come we couldn't get anybody in there?' ''
Capt. Brad Foster, the team's jump master and operator of a recreational jump business at the municipal airport, trained the jump team.
Foster came to Hampton Roads as a member of a Navy SEAL unit. He met Saunders while providing training to the Chesapeake SWAT team. When Saunders decided to create a jump component for the volunteer force, he asked Foster to help.
Foster agreed. Sunday, he was the first man out of the plane. And the first man on the ground.
Saunders has seen the 43rd through a decade of name changes and an evolving mission. They started as a military outfit specializing in rapid response. Now they are a civilian resource that has taken on crisis and natural disasters up and down the East Coast.
The fact that they have been able to change has helped them survive.
They were formed in 1985 as an infantry unit comparable to the Army's Rangers for the Virginia Defense Force, a Reagan-era supplement to the commonwealth's Army National Guard. When the Virginia legislature changed the mission of the Defense Force in 1989, Saunders' volunteers looked elsewhere to practice their skills. They were granted a federal charter as a Civil Air Patrol squadron.
The mission became ground search and rescue, using military tactics and training to save civilian lives.
They have provided aid to victims of hurricanes such as Andrew in Homestead, Fla., and, earlier this month, Fran in Wilmington, N.C.
In 1993, they began lending support to the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office, and the Virginia Department of Emergency Services designated them an active search and rescue unit.
The people in the 43rd are all volunteers. Some are ex-military, though many have never practiced combat and tactics.
Whatever their background, the volunteers train hard. They follow military doctrines, learning tracking, patrolling and other skills that they apply to civilian situations.
No member is paid. The volunteers provide their own basic gear and field equipment.
According to Saunders, the 43rd receives about $15,000 a year for training and for lifesaving and rescue gear. The hospital contributed another $17,000 to start the jump program, which has now begun a three-year test period.
``If it works, it will be extended,'' said Saunders. ``If not, it will shut down.'' ILLUSTRATION: D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
The Virginian-Pilot
Jumpmaster Brad Foster led a weekend demo of the 43rd Virginia
Volunteer Search and Rescue Company's new parachuting team. by CNB