Red Horse engineers from Nellis fight fire in Grenada

Dick Benoit

Thursday, Aug. 10, 2000 | 10:15 a.m.

Four members of the 820th Civil Engineering Squadron, known as Red Horse, pitched in to extinguish a three-alarm fire in Grenada last month.

The airmen are among 68 Red Horse members who deployed to Grenada in mid-May as part of New Horizons 2000, a multiservice readiness and humanitarian exercise. They are due back this week.

The call for assistance came from businessmen in St. George, Grenada, on July 15, according to Maj. Donna Nicholas of the Joint Task Force Public Affairs office for the exercise. The fire, which ignited in a lumber and textiles store, threatened to burn down the entire business district because there were no fire hydrants.

Sgt. George McFadden assembled fellow Red Horse members -- Airmen Jessie Jacobson, Jason Lilly and Jeremiah Johnson -- to respond to the emergency with water trucks. The airmen provided water for local firefighters using the 26,000-pound water tankers that were being used in the construction of a local community center and barracks.

After filling fire engines at the scene, the Nellis crew recharged the tankers at the nearest source, the ocean, until larger fire engines from elsewhere on the island arrived at the scene.

Volunteers sought

The Southern Nevada Federal Executive Association is sponsoring a food drive for Red Cross, Salvation Army and Catholic Charities and is requesting active duty, reserve, retired and military dependent volunteers to supervise donation boxes located at the base commissary Aug. 14-18 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

To volunteer or obtain more information, call 652-2298 or 652-4314.

In brief

Western High School 1999 graduate Drew Albers recently participated in multinational training in northern Italy called Veneto Rescue. The Army private, son of Sonja Kroll of Las Vegas, is assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Airborne Combat Team stationed near Vicenza, Italy.

Veneto Rescue brought together U.S., Italian and Slovenian soldiers in a scenario that required evacuating U.S. citizens from a hostile situation.

"The exercise trained us in noncombatant evacuation operations," Albers, an airborne infantryman and machine gunner, said. "We learned how to save civilians with little or no casualties on either side."

Albers' unit is part of the Southern European Task Force, which would be responsible for carrying out such operations in Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.