Nellis urges visitors to plan fewer trips to base

Monday, Sept. 17, 2001 | 10:37 a.m.

Nellis Air Force Base experienced a busy but solemn weekend, officials said today, and is asking that base visitors make fewer trips with combined purposes.

"It would be helpful if people like retirees plan their trips so they can do things like shop at the commissary and pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy instead of making individual trips," Master Sgt. Charles Ramey, a base spokesman, said.

"We are still on a heightened level of security and we ask visitors to be mindful that there will be delays and they need to be patient. Fewer trips will mean less strain and traffic at the gates."

Ramey said the mood was "solemn" at the base this past weekend as people went about their business as normally as they could in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil last Tuesday.

The base remains on Forced Protection Level Charlie, one step below the highest level of alert, Delta, where Nellis went immediately after the tragedies in New York City and Washington, D.C. Both heightened levels of awareness mean that there is restricted movement around and tighter security on the base.

Nellis, the home of the Air Warfare Center, the USAF Weapons Fighter School and the Air Force's demonstration squadron, the Thunderbirds, is primarily a training facility, but has in the past contributed to combat efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and other war-torn regions.

Airmen remained on standby today, as they have since the suicide plane crashes, but Ramey said there has been no word about deployments.