All abuzz about low-level flights

Diana Sahagun

Thursday, March 9, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

Virginia Ridgway remembers a helicopter "invasion" on her town last June.

She lives in Goldfield, a hard-luck old mining town 183 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

There was no mistaking the jet-black military helicopters, screaming overhead so loudly in the dead of night that she was sure they were going to land on her roof.

The constant buzz from the Nellis Air Force Base planes and helicopters conducting low-level flights are a way of life for Ridgway, a 20-year resident of the town, and its 450 other citizens.

Goldfield is on the edge of the Tonopah Test Range, where some aircraft such as the F-117A Stealth fighter have been tested. The test range is the northern section of the 3-million-acre Nellis Air Force Range.

A federal lawsuit filed in January asserts that the low-level flights affect humans and wildlife.

The suit, filed in Washington, alleges the Air Force is violating the National Environmental Policy Act by not addressing the environmental effects of low-level flight training. A coalition of citizens groups, led by the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability of Reno, filed the suit. Others include the Western Environmental Law Center of Taos, N.M., and the Center for Biological Diversity of Berkeley, Calif.

Fighters, bombers, transport planes and other military aircraft are used by the Air Force in low-level flight training, according to the lawsuit. The Air Force defines low altitude as 100 feet to 3,000 feet above ground level. It says the majority of the training flights are at between 200 and 500 feet at speeds up to 645 mph.

The lawsuit claims low-level flights are extremely loud and sometimes break the sound barrier.

Les Hornback, a rancher near Austin in central Nevada, agrees. In his case, the flights originate at Fallon Naval Air Station about 100 miles west of Austin, where the Navy's "Top Gun" training is conducted.

"I was deafened twice, the first time for an hour and a half ... and the second time for two hours," he said. Although he filed an accident report sent to him by the base, he said he has received no response.

Dozens of Austin residents have called the base to complain of property damage caused by sonic booms.

Fallon station officials twice admitted in 1997 to violations by pilots who left the operating area and flew over the town. At least 20 homes were damaged.

Because the planes fly close to the ground, low-level overflights by military aircraft also involve "an extreme and pronounced visual intrusion," the lawsuit says. Shock or panic often are caused in both humans and animals by the sudden intrusion, the suit says.

Dorothy Stowell, a Goldfield resident for 23 years, recalls terrifying incidents while driving with her mother.

"There were occasions when you would be darting down Highway 95 and have some of those planes come right over the top of your car, and it sounds like they are going to come up your tailpipe," she said. "My mother almost had a heart attack."

Nellis officials declined to be interviewed but released this statement:

"Realistic training is essential for the United States Air Force. It provides the combat edge that enables victory in battle and reduces American casualties.

"The Air Force works closely with federal agencies, Native American tribes and local governments to balance its tests, training and readiness requirements with responsible environmental stewardship.

"The Air Force analyzes the potential impacts of low-level flights when needed ... and does not believe stopping the training is warranted."

Simeon Herskovits of the Western Environmental Law Center said the citizen groups hope to force the Air Force to conduct a comprehensive analysis and to either prevent them from engaging in low-level flight training or prevent them from expanding until the analysis is completed.

"It's our expectation and hope that the statement will result in the public and Air Force recognizing the harmful impacts and lead the Air Force to scale back or modify aspects of low-level flights," he said.

Herskovits said the government has two months to respond, either with an answer or a motion to dismiss.

Although most of the low-level flights come from the area outside Las Vegas, Leona Campbell, who lives near Tonopah Avenue and Lamb Boulevard, said she's seen and heard Nellis aircraft near her home.

"Their airplanes were about 100 feet above the roof of a school (Manuel Cortez Elementary)," she said of an incident last fall. "People were scared to death. I thought for sure they were going to take out the top of our building."

Weeks later, she said, jets came screaming just above her apartment building and roared their afterburners.

"If they happen to kick their afterburner in, they can take the hearing of everyone that's down below them on the ground," Campbell, 75, said.

Richard Birger, Desert National Wildlife Range project leader that is part of Nellis Air Force Range, said his department and Nellis have been working together since World War II to address these concerns.

Of the 1.5 million acres of the wildlife range, Nellis uses 846,000 acres for testing and training, he said. Of that, 112,000 acres are part of bombing ranges and the rest is a security buffer.

"We've developed a working relationship where we try to make them aware of our needs, and we try to accommodate where we can," Birger said. "It's not an easy task, because the mission of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife (which oversees the wildlife range) is far different from Nellis."

Birger admits that there is always an effect from low-level flights but said it is hard to generalize the situation because not all flights are at the same speed or altitude.

"They have exclusive use of that area," he said of Nellis. "We're trying to come up with a consensus, trying to find a way to allow the Air Force to meet its training needs and still not affect wildlife resources. There's not a cookbook or grand plan we can all point to. It's almost on a case-by-case basis."

Richard Smucker, another Austin rancher, said he backs the lawsuit because the military refuses to reimburse him and others for damage caused by Fallon flights.

Every January, Smucker said, he braces for the worst, knowing the air base's yearly exercise will rattle his home -- literally.

In January his home suffered $6,000 worth of damage from broken sheet rock and cracks in the drywall after a sound barrier break, he said. He said base engineers have visited his home and after he filed a claim, the Air Force wrote him a check for $4,000.

"It picks up your house and shakes it like a dead rat," he said.