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Safety has your back

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Jacob Morgan
  • 436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
Everything from bird patterns to motorcycle equipment; these Team Dover members know it all. The 436th Airlift Wing Safety Office has the responsibility of monitoring the safety of all aspects of Dover Air Force Base, Del.

"Everything we do in the wing safety office is to protect Team Dover's resources and personnel," said Kevin Greene, 436 AW chief of ground safety. "We prevent mishaps from occurring and should one occur, our ultimate goal is to prevent it from happening again."

The wing safety office is split into three components; flight safety, ground safety and weapons and explosives safety.

Flight safety monitors anything having to do with flying, including monitoring bird activity to preventing and investigating aircraft mishaps.

Bird activity can cause different levels of hazards, which prevent planes from taking off and landing due to danger. Recently, with a new bird monitoring system, the amount of bird hazards placed on Dover AFB has diminished.

"As a C-17 Globemaster III pilot, we spend a lot of time in the bird environment at Dover AFB," said Capt. Ryan Daugherty, 436 AW flight safety officer. "If you take on a bird on landing or take-off and lose an engine; it could be very detrimental to your safety."

Part of the flight safety job is to prevent mishaps, and investigate when they do happen. In the aircraft world, there are four different types of mishaps; Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class E. Class A mishaps are the most serious including either death or more than $2 million in damages. Class E mishaps are the lowest and involve non-damaging bird strikes and reporting hazardous practices to safe operations of aircraft.

"You have to watch for the little things all of the time," Capt. Brandt Hausmann, 436 AW flight safety officer. "This will foster an environment of personal responsibility and overall safety."

Fostering an environment of overall safety and responsibility is also the main focus of Mr. Greene. This ranges from motorcycle safety classes to the permit-required confined space program, which comes into action when personnel are in a limited space not typical designed for human occupancy such as the fuel tanks of a C-5M Super Galaxy.

"My job is to ensure compliance with federal and Air Force safety regulations. I also coordinate with commanders, if necessary, to help fix certain safety issues," said Mr. Greene.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration book of federal laws is more than 800 pages of size 10 text. AF Instructions are typically more stringent, said Mr. Greene.

"Remember as an Air Force member, you are on duty 24/7," said Mr. Greene. "At wing safety, we need personnel to remember to not walk away from their safety responsibility when they are off-duty."

While ground safety has a large book and stringent AFIs, the most regimented and unforgiving safety position is weapons and explosive safety. They monitor anyone who handles weapons and explosives, from guns to bombs. However, weapons are not dangerous until the explosives are introduced.

Therefore, the cardinal goal of the weapons and explosives safety section is to ensure exposure of explosives is limited. This includes the amount of explosives, the amount of people, and the time they are exposed to them.

"It's every additional-duty weapons safety representative's responsibility on base to ensure the health and welfare of people and buildings around them," said Ernie Natividad, 436 AW weapons safety manager. "I rely heavily upon each squadron's ADWSR to ensure there is a solid weapons safety program at Dover AFB. Without their involvement there would not be the great system we have in place today."

Between all three offices, there are times where they must work together. The line gets meshed on the flightline often, and depending on the incident or accident the most equipped and less task saturated section will take lead.

"Our overall goal is to instill an attitude of safety first," said Mr. Greene. "Hopefully this will create a culture of safety, which will perpetuate itself."