Photo By Cpl. Timothy Norris | Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 273 dig up and remove dead trees and debris...... read more read more
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MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, S.C. - Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 273 battled Mother Nature on the beaches of Hunting Island, Feb. 8-18.
The Sweathogs were invited to help with erosion control as a mutually beneficial project between the park and MWSS-273.
With Hunting Island’s approximately one million visitors every year, “It’s an ongoing battle with the erosion,” explained Daniel Gambrell, the Hunting Island park manager. “We’ve been excited for the last two years now to have the Marines come out and assist us. It’s something we could not accomplish without their help.”
Hunting Island is a 5,000 acre semi-tropical South Carolina state park that was created in 1935 and is the most visited state park in South Carolina. The park is home to the only publicly accessible lighthouse in the state and has the only public beach access in Beaufort County. Because of the confluence between the Atlantic Ocean and the Saint Helena Sound, the island has experienced severe erosion since the 1980s.
“We have a lot of man-made and natural debris on the beach and we do not have the equipment, manpower or finances to take care of a job of this magnitude,” Gambrell said. “That’s why we asked the Marines to come out and assist with it. It’s a win-win situation.”
The team consisted of 32 Marines and 1 Navy corpsman. With communication specialists, motor transportation Marines, heavy equipment operators, combat engineers and food service specialists, the team was completely self-sufficient and gave Marines in other fields of work an opportunity to operate in a simulated forward environment.
“It’s a fairly big project,” said Sgt. Joshua Bickford, a MWSS-273 engineer equipment operator and project manager from Bangor, Maine. “Our junior operators who haven’t had an opportunity to deploy get to come out here and get more operating time in their military occupational specialty and become more proficient.”
The combat engineers and heavy equipment operators were the backbone of the project, felling trees with chainsaws and removing and transporting stumps, concrete and other debris.
“We sweep for improvised explosive devices, do demolitions, build squad huts and airfields, however chainsaw operating is one of the things that’s often overlooked,” said Sgt. Jessie Gibbens, a MWSS-273 combat engineer from Hoyt, Kansas. “It’s good to come and get realistic training in a challenging environment. It’s a challenge, but not one we can’t handle.”
Gibbons and Bickford agreed that practical application is one of the best methods of training to prepare Marines for deployment.
“There are a lot of areas in the world Marines deploy to. A lot of them have terrain like Hunting Island,” Gibbens said. “Training in the full spectrum, we’ll know how to fell trees in a safe, effective and timely manner.”
After ten days, the Sweathogs cleared nearly four miles of beachfront on the island. The Marines were more prepared to deploy and patrons of the park had a safer and cleaner environment to enjoy.
| Date Taken: | 02.21.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 02.21.2014 11:25 |
| Story ID: | 120963 |
| Location: | MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, SC, US |
| Web Views: | 98 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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