[StBernard] Guard equipment low for hurricane season

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Tue Apr 10 21:51:18 EDT 2007


By RON WORD
The Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The war in Iraq has depleted the equipment
inventory of the National Guard, potentially hampering its response to the
predicted heavy hurricane season, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said.

The Florida National Guard has only 53 percent of the dual-use equipment it
once had for responding to a storm or domestic disturbance, a recent
analysis by the Government Accountability Office found. Texas, California
and Louisiana also have about half of their dual-use equipment available to
non-deployed Army National Guard forces.

"Problems from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the Florida
National Guard further than ever before, leaving it without all the
resources it should have for responding to a domestic crisis," Nelson said.
"Hurricane season is coming fast and, we need to make sure the Guard has
what it needs."

The hurricane season, which runs June 1 through Nov. 30, is predicted to be
worse than recent years.

Florida has about 600 to 700 soldiers in Iraq. Members were sent overseas
with their equipment, but when they come back, the gear often stays in the
war zones.

The Florida Guard was down 500 Humvees, 600 trucks, short 4,000 pairs of
night vision goggle and needed 30 more wreckers, spokesman Lt. Col. Ron
Tittle said.

Yet Tittle said sufficient manpower and equipment remained to respond to a
major hurricane, and additional supplies could be borrowed from other states
or rented if needed.

But Nelson questioned the lag time and the fact that the other state Guard
units also are facing the same depletion of equipment problems.

"I know that at the highest levels ... they are concerned about this,"
Nelson, D-Fla., said.

Nelson said a memorandum of understanding between the Army and the National
Guard could allow Gov. Charlie Crist to use Army Reserve trucks and
generators upon the declaration of a State of Emergency. Without such a
memorandum, the governor has to go through a bureaucratic process to request
that the president release Reserve equipment that is being held unused in
Florida.






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