Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas –
Airmen with the 433rd Maintenance Squadron conducted their annual fuel extraction exercise Nov. 1 at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. The annual exercise is graded for extraction protocol, execution time, and safety. The exercise began with sound of a bull horn, starting the clock. A call was placed by Staff Sgt. Eric Garcia, 433rd MXS fuel systems technician, to emergency services on base indicating that an Airmen was trapped inside the wing of a C-5M Super Galaxy aircraft. Senior Airman Jaydee Gonzales and Tech. Sgt. David Ragsdale, 433rd MXS fuel systems technicians, monitored the trapped Airmen as they waited for emergency services to arrive.
Firemen with the 502nd Civil Engineering Squadron arrived on scene within minutes of reciving the call. Dressed in their confined spaces gear, the firemen began extracting the manikin from underneath the aircrafts wing. Once the manikin was secured from the wing Ragsdale along with other emergency personnel provided CPR to the patient as they waited for emergency medical services to arrive for transport to the hospital.
"We are moving to a younger Air Force with less experience, and we have more work now than we ever have so the chance of something happening is much higher," said Senior Master Sgt. Leonard Vidal, 433rd MXS fuel systems section chief.