thedrifter
03-15-03, 08:42 AM
March 14, 2003
Missing gunny waits out sandstorm in parked Humvee
By Elliott Blair Smith
USA Today
CAMP COYOTE, KUWAIT — A man is missing. It’s just past 10 on Wednesday night, and heavy winds are blowing waves of dust and sand across the dark desert. Marines camped here stumble and lurch for familiar moorings in what suddenly has become a sand haze.
Inside the Marine officers’ tent, most men already are bundled in their sleeping bags on the plywood flooring. The wind blew out the officers’ electrical supply a half-hour earlier. The storm leaves a half-inch of dust on every surface.
Electrical power is eventually restored. As light floods back into the tent, it reveals a scene that now resembles the inside of a car wash — except that dirt is flying instead of water. At the same time, word arrives that Gunnery Sgt. Alvin Harewood, 40, of Queens, N.Y., is missing.
In preparing for war with Iraq, the Marines camped among the desert dunes at Kuwait’s northern border have met the first line of resistance: tent-rattling winds that gust up to 40 miles an hour. In February, four soldiers were killed nearby when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed in a severe wind and dust storm.
One consequence of the delay in the beginning of any conflict with Iraq is that 50 days of winds known as the “kaus “have begun.
In Kuwait and Iraq, heavy spring winds produce blinding dust storms that can strip paint from a car and obliterate the sun at midday. The storms heighten the danger that troops could become lost and disoriented during combat.
Blowing sand can even distort global positioning satellite systems used to navigate. It ruins electrical equipment — the Marines’ lone working printer here is stored in a trash bag — and chokes the giant air filters in Marine tanks with up to 40 pounds of dirt.
“It’s hard to keep your weapons clean. It’s hard to keep yourself clean,” says Lance Cpl. Aaron Finley of Yakima Wash.
The “kaus”’ arrival also means the direction of the wind will shift from cool southerly breezes that originate in the Persian Gulf to furnace-like blasts from the north. These northerly winds are called “shamals “and bring with them heavy dust and sand storms.
From now to July, the average daily temperature in the desert will rise about 10 degrees a month to a peak of 113 degrees — in the shade. Rising temperatures stoke the winds as air moves from high-pressure areas in the north to low pressure in the south.
“This time of year is probably the worst for winds,” says Stephen Davenport, a Weather News International meteorologist in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Wednesday’s gale came up so suddenly that many soldiers lost their way amid routine nightly tasks such as shaving, showering or visiting friends.
“The winds were just ferocious,” says Master Sgt. Randy Stevens of Tacoma, Wash.
“The Marines fought as hard as they could to keep the tents up.”
In the officers’ tent after 10 p.m., Capt. Scott McDonald orders an “accountability check” of the several hundred soldiers under his command. Tent by tent, reports come back. Initially, three men are missing, but two are found hunkered down in a Humvee.
The missing man, Sgt. Harewood, is a Marine veteran who has been through sandstorms before. He was shaving when the dust at his ankles rose to envelop him in clouds of suffocating sand.
He lost his way in the quarter-mile trek between the Marines’ makeshift showers at one end of Camp Coyote and their billowing tents at the other.
Two hours later, the search for Harewood is suspended for the rest of the night. “It was futile,” McDonald says.
But Harewood is safe. He has crawled inside another Humvee to wait out the storm. At 1:20 a.m., more than four hours after he was last seen, Harewood gropes his way back to his own tent, still half-blinded by sand that swelled his eyes nearly shut.
“I took a couple of steps and the wind hit me,” Harewood says on his return. “It blinded me a little bit. As I got further I bumped into some 5-ton trucks and walked around them. That took me off my path. I couldn’t see the camp, so I shot past it to another camp right below us.”
Sempers,
Roger
Missing gunny waits out sandstorm in parked Humvee
By Elliott Blair Smith
USA Today
CAMP COYOTE, KUWAIT — A man is missing. It’s just past 10 on Wednesday night, and heavy winds are blowing waves of dust and sand across the dark desert. Marines camped here stumble and lurch for familiar moorings in what suddenly has become a sand haze.
Inside the Marine officers’ tent, most men already are bundled in their sleeping bags on the plywood flooring. The wind blew out the officers’ electrical supply a half-hour earlier. The storm leaves a half-inch of dust on every surface.
Electrical power is eventually restored. As light floods back into the tent, it reveals a scene that now resembles the inside of a car wash — except that dirt is flying instead of water. At the same time, word arrives that Gunnery Sgt. Alvin Harewood, 40, of Queens, N.Y., is missing.
In preparing for war with Iraq, the Marines camped among the desert dunes at Kuwait’s northern border have met the first line of resistance: tent-rattling winds that gust up to 40 miles an hour. In February, four soldiers were killed nearby when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed in a severe wind and dust storm.
One consequence of the delay in the beginning of any conflict with Iraq is that 50 days of winds known as the “kaus “have begun.
In Kuwait and Iraq, heavy spring winds produce blinding dust storms that can strip paint from a car and obliterate the sun at midday. The storms heighten the danger that troops could become lost and disoriented during combat.
Blowing sand can even distort global positioning satellite systems used to navigate. It ruins electrical equipment — the Marines’ lone working printer here is stored in a trash bag — and chokes the giant air filters in Marine tanks with up to 40 pounds of dirt.
“It’s hard to keep your weapons clean. It’s hard to keep yourself clean,” says Lance Cpl. Aaron Finley of Yakima Wash.
The “kaus”’ arrival also means the direction of the wind will shift from cool southerly breezes that originate in the Persian Gulf to furnace-like blasts from the north. These northerly winds are called “shamals “and bring with them heavy dust and sand storms.
From now to July, the average daily temperature in the desert will rise about 10 degrees a month to a peak of 113 degrees — in the shade. Rising temperatures stoke the winds as air moves from high-pressure areas in the north to low pressure in the south.
“This time of year is probably the worst for winds,” says Stephen Davenport, a Weather News International meteorologist in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Wednesday’s gale came up so suddenly that many soldiers lost their way amid routine nightly tasks such as shaving, showering or visiting friends.
“The winds were just ferocious,” says Master Sgt. Randy Stevens of Tacoma, Wash.
“The Marines fought as hard as they could to keep the tents up.”
In the officers’ tent after 10 p.m., Capt. Scott McDonald orders an “accountability check” of the several hundred soldiers under his command. Tent by tent, reports come back. Initially, three men are missing, but two are found hunkered down in a Humvee.
The missing man, Sgt. Harewood, is a Marine veteran who has been through sandstorms before. He was shaving when the dust at his ankles rose to envelop him in clouds of suffocating sand.
He lost his way in the quarter-mile trek between the Marines’ makeshift showers at one end of Camp Coyote and their billowing tents at the other.
Two hours later, the search for Harewood is suspended for the rest of the night. “It was futile,” McDonald says.
But Harewood is safe. He has crawled inside another Humvee to wait out the storm. At 1:20 a.m., more than four hours after he was last seen, Harewood gropes his way back to his own tent, still half-blinded by sand that swelled his eyes nearly shut.
“I took a couple of steps and the wind hit me,” Harewood says on his return. “It blinded me a little bit. As I got further I bumped into some 5-ton trucks and walked around them. That took me off my path. I couldn’t see the camp, so I shot past it to another camp right below us.”
Sempers,
Roger