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CNN Live At Daybreak
Crash of U.S. Refueling Jet Grim Reminder of Dangers in War on Terrorism
Aired January 10, 2002 - 05:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The crash of a U.S. refueling jet is a grim reminder of the dangers in the war on terrorism. As CNN's Beth Nissen explains, air crews go to great lengths to survive a crash in such a cold region.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Winters in Afghanistan can be brutally cold, especially in the mountains. U.S. military planes flying over the region risk going down or being shot down into arctic cold -- minus 20 to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
To learn how to survive that, pilots and air crews come here to Alaska, 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle to Eielson Air Force Base, outside Fairbanks, home of the Arctic Survival School.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, the will to survive is a big factor for you, the survivor, and it's the desire to live. All right. And this what's going to drive you. This is what's going to give you the motivation to get yourself home to your family, get yourself home to your job.
NISSEN: The school's motto: learn and return. It is part of mission training for a military pilot.
CAPT. STEVE BENTON, U.S. AIR FORCE: If I had to eject, and I'm surviving in the arctic conditions, then that is my new mission. My job at that point is to survive and make it home.
MASTER SERGEANT DAVID MILLS, U.S. AIR FORCE: The primary focus of our school is to train a pilot for the unthinkable, getting shot down, engine malfunction over a very austere location. It could be here in Alaska. But we also prepare them for other environments too, Afghanistan being one of them.
NISSEN: Students get two days of classroom instruction, covering everything from making shelters out of life vests and parachutes, to avoiding frostbite.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If it was your hand or your foot, it can actually become useless, and you've got basically a frozen club that you're trying to deal with.
NISSEN: Classroom work is followed by demonstrations on how to find good drinking water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once I've got water, now I can start thinking about food.
NISSEN: And how to forage for dinner.
MILLS: And that's where we can start looking at some of the plant life that's out here.
NISSEN: A survival hint: 90 percent of blue or black berries are edible; only 50 percent of red ones are.
MILLS: Starting off with the academics, it gives you a chance to hear it. Now, this gives you a chance to visually see it, and then the next step is to go out in the woods and do it.
NISSEN: Just after 07:00 hours the next morning, students and instructors head into the Alaskan interior for two days and two long nights of field classes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to have to find a way to come back to the cold, so that we can maintain 98.6. Remember, that's our main goal here, maintain 98.6, and then we can try to activate rescue. We have to stay alive to get rescued.
NISSEN: On a hike to the outdoor classroom, through snow so cold it squeaks, students set priorities, use the first of their few hours of winter daylight to build a rescue signal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The idea that I'm looking for here is having an area with as much visibility as possible to where I can see an aircraft coming, or the aircraft can see me.
NISSEN: Students use what materials they can find, small pine trees and branches. They arrange them into a standard rescue symbol, a giant letter V.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If someone was injured here, I would put out an X... That would be telling rescue forces that we need medical attention. Since we are not in that situation, we'll put out a V. That basically means need assistance.
NISSEN: The survival school does not teach winter warfare, although it does teach students to combat the cold.
How dangerous an enemy is cold?
MILLS: It will kill you. The cold will take you down very quick. I mean, as fast as 15 to 20 minutes, you would be done.
NISSEN: At the sun's feeble high on this day, the temperature is 25 degrees below 0, cold enough to kill a near exposure to cause lethal dehydration. Extreme cold speeds up body metabolism, burns water. Students learn to gather snow and ice in pouches and melt it with body heat. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, I would go ahead and brush the outside of the bag off, so as I'm putting it into the layers of my clothing, I don't end up with a whole bunch of wet clothing due to the snow melting.
NISSEN: Wet clothes harden into an icy shell and drop body temperatures sharply. Students are taught to stay active but move slowly, avoid breaking into a sweat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to go in and just start loosening my layers of my clothing, open up the flight suit a little bit just to let that heat get out.
NISSEN: Students use another hour of weak daylight to find wood, to make shelter frames and fire. Dead trees can be processed into logs, into kindling with emergency kit tools and a little knowledge of back wood's physics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wipe the snow off of it, and I've got a pretty good piece of split wood.
NISSEN: Standard issue emergency kits contain a knife and matches. Students learn how to use them and later how to use flint to make a fire in the icy cold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, strike the match, cup my hand, wait until that match head gets going really well, put it in there.
NISSEN: And a survivor has fire, essential warmth, a flicker of hope. It looks like a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) process, until the students try to do it themselves with cold, numbed hands.
MILLS: We push them out there and make sure that they can do it. And if they need a little help, we'll give them some help. So one day if they flame out or if they get hit by a surface-to-air missile or something happens they need to get out of that aircraft, and they find themselves in an arctic situation, it will all come back to them. They may not think it will, but it will all come back to them.
NISSEN: And give them a better chance of coming back home.
Beth Nissen, CNN, in the Alaskan Interior.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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