BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq –
It takes a special kind of person to deal with the stress of working with explosives.
That pressure is the force that drives 34 Airmen assigned to the 332nd Expeditionary Civil Engineering Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal Flight located at Balad and spread across five forward operating bases.
Staff Sgt. Micah Jobe, 332nd ECES EOD team leader, is one of the Airmen at Balad who responds daily to unexploded ordnance found on and off the installation.
“An average day for us consists of waking up to do physical training, if we are not woken up to respond to calls; then we go to a morning meeting to receive a briefing on the things we learned from the day before,” Sergeant Jobe said.
After that the Airmen complete office work and training until a call comes in.
The calls have continued to come in since Sept. 1, 2005 as EOD Airmen have responded to more than 900 incidents, disposing of approximately 57,000 explosive items totaling more than 7 tons of net explosive weight.
Approximately 95 percent of calls EOD Airmen responded to were off base, said Maj. Arno Bischoff, EOD flight commander, who is deployed from Langley. About a third of the responses were made for improvised explosive devices, another third were for post-blast analysis conducted after an IED blows up and the final third were for unexploded ordnance and weapons caches.
Sergeant Jobe said, “When a team is on primary stand-by, we generally get about two calls a day to respond to off base.”
When the Airmen respond to these off-base calls they work with an Army Quick Response Force which provides protection for the EOD Airmen outside the wire.
“They are our security the whole time we are off base,” Sergeant Jobe said. “They do a good job.”
Staff Sgt. Glenn Wright, EOD technician is serving on this fourth deployment and has noticed a few changes to responses over his career.
“Things have changed drastically since I was deployed to Kirkuk (Air Base, Iraq),” Sergeant Wright said. “We are working with the Army more now and I have really enjoyed this.”
In addition to assisting with off-base calls, the Soldiers and Airmen work side-by-side running the Joint Defense Operations Center which provides command and control of the defense of Logical Support Area Anaconda and Balad.
During alarm yellow unit post-attack recon teams call discovered UXOs into their Unit Control Center and in turn to the JDOC, which then sends out EOD and crater analysis team.
“Security Forces personnel cordon the area off before we go in,” Sergeant Jobe said. “We make sure the area is safe before performing crater analysis -- who tries to discover the point of origin. Then we further evaluate the UXO to determine whether or not it is safe to blow it up in place and what protective measures must be implemented if it needs to be destroyed.”
In addition to supporting Anaconda and Balad, the 332nd EOD Flight provides EOD support from multiple Army FOBs.
“We provide EOD support to the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division,” Major Bischoff said. Overall, EOD is responsible for the battle space around Anaconda, extending out more than 18,000 square miles and forming the largest EOD flight under U.S. Central Command Air Forces.
The Airmen in the flight take pride in their jobs and what they do.
“When you take care of an IED you are essentially saving a life and that is rewarding,” Sergeant Jobe said.