Robins airmen give help to Armenia

A group of Robins airmen returned recently from a unique humanitarian mission.

The 116th Civil Engineer Squadron, part of the Georgia Air National Guard’s 116th Air Control Wing, sent 24 airmen to Armenia for most of May.

Their mission was to renovate a wing of a home for the elderly in Yerevan, the country’s capital city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Maj. Tasha Liscombe-Folds, who led the group, said the squadron’s mission on a combat deployment is similar to that of a city’s public works department. The squadron repairs and maintains buildings, roads and other infrastructure, often in remote locations with limited resources.

That’s not easy work to simulate for training.

To train for deployment, each year the squadron does some type of humanitarian mission that involves construction or renovation work. Last year it renovated a Boy Scout camp in Maine, and two years ago the airmen performed work for the Navaho nation in Arizona.

But the trip to Armenia, Liscombe-Folds said, was especially good training because the limited resources closely mimicked what airmen might face when deployed to a combat area. That included having to use hand saws instead of power saws.

“For the new guys who have never left the country and never deployed, this is very realistic conditions for what they will face on a deployment,” she said.

Because they went there on a commercial airline, they couldn’t take much equipment and had to rely on what was available, which wasn’t a lot.

The home is for elderly people who have no family to take care of them. It houses about 200 residents, and the airmen worked along with Armenian contractors to fully renovate one wing. The building had not been renovated in more than 60 years and was in an unsafe condition, the airmen said. They replaced all the wiring and plumbing, among other improvements.

Senior Airman Casey Ashley is a medic with the unit, but he pitched in to help with the construction work. While most of the group focused on the wing, he did minor handyman repairs throughout the building.

He said many of the rooms, which were small, had three residents with only one bathroom.

“It was very eye-opening seeing the different conditions,” he said.

But he said it was rewarding work because the residents were appreciative of even the minor repairs.

Together with the 461st Air Control Wing, an active-duty unit, the 116th Air Control Wing operates the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or J-STARS, at Robins.

This story was originally published June 17, 2016 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Robins airmen give help to Armenia."