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Safety is 24-hour operation

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Angelique N. Smythe
  • 451st Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  In efforts to prevent the loss of people or equipment needed to execute the mission, members of the 451st Air Expeditionary Wing Safety office work around the clock to keep safety hazards to a minimum.

There are three disciplines: weapons, ground and flight safety. The members of each discipline conduct inspections, program evaluations and mishap investigations. They also recommend programs to leaders that can prevent certain types of mishaps from occurring in the future.

As the Weapons Safety Manager, Tech. Sgt. Anthony Moore, ensures all personnel and equipment on and off the installation are located at safe distances in the event of a potential explosion.

"There are things that a lot of people don't realize about explosives," said Sergeant Moore. "First, there's a blast overpressure that can cause damage to equipment or injury or death to personnel. Then, there are fragments.

"If a blast should take place, debris and shrapnel would be flying around, so my job is to make sure people are safe from the blast pressure as well as the fragments because fragments can cause just as much damage as the actual blast. So, my ultimate responsibility is to expose the minimum amount of people to the minimum amount of explosives for a minimum amount of time."

Senior Master Sgt. Bruce Strong, Jr., who's in charge of ground safety, takes care of all industrial-type safety programs, which includes OSHA, fire prevention, vehicle and pedestrian safety.

Flight safety includes dealing with bird air strike hazards, mid air collision avoidance programs and hazardous air traffic reports.

"With the exception of a few programs, many of the flight safety aspects out here in the AOR (area of responsibility) are more reactionary than preventative," said Captain Justin Paulson. "Still, we emphasize ORM (operation risk management) for the crew and cockpit resource management. We do our best to take care of everything as much as we can without affecting the mission in a negative way, such as making sure there aren't birds in the airfield so the aircraft can take off safely and improving the airspace by making sure controllers are aware of all the different limitations, and educating pilots about other aircraft."

Although one cannot count the number of lives saved through a safety prevention program, as most of their statistics are related to the number of times safety procedures may have been broken down, these experts work hard to keep a low number of mishaps within this high operations tempo.

"You can only put so many programs in place," said Sergeant Strong. "If you walk by the fire extinguisher, that fire extinguisher is in a serviceable condition, so we're doing our job. The pathways to the exits of the buildings are clear, so we've done our job allowing people to egress buildings safely."

The 451st AEW Safety team is responsible for the safety of approximately 1,200 Airmen in the wing.

"We have a lot of experienced guys who are really good at what they do and they bring all that knowledge here," said Captain Paulson.

Sergeant Strong said the success of this program is based on leaders, supervisors and Airmen who are receptive to the recommendations of the safety officers.

"On the flightline you can have many different attitudes and many different challenges, but everybody's embracing safety, even if it's just wearing the smallest form of personnel protective equipment," Sergeant Strong said.

Airmen are encouraged to continue practicing safe actions as well as report safety concerns to the wing's safety office. Also, each month, Airmen, both teams and individuals, are awarded within the three disciplines for performing acts that go above and beyond to ensure the safety of themselves and other members o the wing.

"If you see your peers doing something above and beyond, let your bosses know, keep channeling it up," said Captain Paulson. "We get a lot of good submissions and we'll do our best to make sure those are highlighted, even higher than Kandahar."