Aid mission over, Tarawa heads to 5th Fleet
SAN DIEGO — Deployment from here typically means a few weeks’ trek across the big blue Pacific, perhaps with a few liberty stops at a port with warm, palm-lined beaches. That is, of course, unless a real-world mission calls.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/12/navy_tarawa_mission_071213w/
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 14, 2007 6:04:05 EST
That’s what some 3,000 Marines and sailors aboard amphibious assault ship Tarawa learned after a devastating cyclone struck Bangladesh on Nov. 15.
The westward cruise for Tarawa Expeditionary Strike Group, which left San Diego on Nov. 5, soon turned into a real humanitarian operation for some 3,000 Marines and sailors aboard the amphibious assault ship.
By Thanksgiving weekend, the East Coast-based Kearsarge was off Bangladesh’s coast helping residents and delivering water and aid. Tarawa, in Guam for the holiday with its 5,000-member, six-ship strike group, got orders to alter its plans for a scheduled exercise in the region and instead follow in Kearsarge’s wake for the U.S. mission, dubbed Sea Angel II, supporting the Bangladeshi government efforts.
“We were tracking the storm and realized that it’ll be bad,” Capt. John Miley, who’s leading the strike group as commodore of Amphibious Squadron 1, said Dec. 12 by telephone from Tarawa during a port visit in Singapore. Tarawa, which took over from Kearsarge Dec. 4, wrapped up its aid mission on Dec. 7 and continued on its deployment.
From the ship, Miley and his staff along with Tarawa’s skipper and crew, had already planned for a scheduled military training exercise with Bangladesh but had to revised plans for their potential new missions. “We were receiving updates and stuff from Kearsarge, so we knew what to expect when we got there,” Miley said.
Tarawa carries more than 1,000 Marines with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and nearly 30 helicopters, including two Navy MH-60S Seahawks. The big-deck ship also carries two utility landing craft and one air-cushioned landing craft, and Tarawa deployed with a fleet surgical team, which sent mobile medical teams inland to assist nearly 400 residents.
When the ship arrived, the most pressing need was food, Miley said. Initial relief efforts had brought sufficient water to affected residents, many suffering amid destroyed homes and a lack of road networks that stymied the distribution of aid that already had been stockpiled in Bangladesh.
From the air, Miley said, the scope of the devastation and needs were clear. “Helicopters are definitely the way to go out when it comes to delivering supplies,” he said.
Navy crews, including efforts by Tarawa and Kearsarge, delivered 254,425 pounds of food and supplies and 14,309 gallons of water, treated 2,355 patients and flew 401 hours of helicopter support missions for the relief effort, according to final figures provided by Lt. Stephanie Murdock, Amphibious Squadron 1’s public affairs officer.
Humanitarian aid and disaster relief is a mission routinely practiced and planned by the Navy’s strike groups and Corps’ MEUs, which train for the gamut of military operations, including combat. Miley said that while many sailors and Marines didn’t go ashore to assist with ground relief efforts, everyone aboard ultimately helped the larger effort. The experience, he added, “certainly puts things in perspective about how lucky and how fortunate we are to live in the United States.”
“The blue-green team worked efficiently, they worked effectively and most importantly, they worked safely in some challenging conditions,” Marine Col. John Bullard, 11th MEU’s commander, said in a Navy news story. “But I think it was evidence of how effective sea-based operations are for relief efforts — we had had a minimal footprint ashore, but we were still more than able to deliver significant relief to those places most in need.”
Tarawa strike group and 11th MEU are expected to continue onto the U.S. 5th Fleet area, where the forces become the theater reserve and may be sent to Kuwait or Iraq.
“We hope to be home on time, but you never know,” Miley said.
Morale, he added, remains high, and “everyone is doing well. When you go out and do a mission, when you go and help people out, people get excited about it. They rise to the occasion.”