-Caveat Lector-
Tuesday, June 08, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Helicopters give residents scare
Air Force officials cannot say why a night exercise
would have brought four aircraft roaring over town.
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Air Force officials could not explain why four military helicopters on a
special exercise late Sunday night at the Tonopah Test Range thundered over
Goldfield, terrifying residents and sending dust flying at the town's
airstrip, where one of the craft touched down.
"We don't know why they were hanging around Goldfield," said Nellis Air
Force Base spokesman Mike Estrada about the mysterious flights that
occurred about 9:15 and 10:15 Sunday night on the outskirts of the Tonopah
Test Range.
The test range is the northern section of the 3-million-acre Nellis Air
Force Range.
Residents in the Esmeralda County community of 450, which has one blinking
traffic signal and is 186 miles northwest of Las Vegas, were rudely
awakened by the ruckus.
"Those guys scared the hell out of this town last night," Justice of the
Peace Juanita Colvin said Monday.
Another resident, Virginia Ridgway, who lives in the middle of town, one
block south of U.S. Highway 95, said she thought "it was an airliner coming
down.
"It was so loud. It was right over the house, and then I thought a
helicopter was going to crash on the house. It sounded like something big
and heavy and loud. I thought, 'Oh well, I'm 66. That's it,' " she said.
For Ridgway, being buzzed by helicopters was yet another encounter with
government aircraft, from jets that seemed as if they were going to fly
into her car's tailpipe as she was driving down the road to an off-course
rocket that was launched from the Nevada Test Site in October 1997.
The 34-foot-long, $2 million Sandia National Laboratories experimental
rocket "went right over the house," she said, before it crashed and burned
on public lands about 10 miles from Goldfield.
"They should be staying the hell on the range and leaving us alone,"
Ridgway said. "They've got more land than they need out there. They don't
need to be scaring citizens in the middle of the night."
Estrada described the craft involved in Sunday night's incident as
dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook cargo-transport helicopters. He said they were
probably Army or Marine craft connected to the Air Force Special Operation
Command, a multi-service organization based in Hurlburt, Fla. "They could
have been from anywhere," he said.
He said that Tonopah Test Range officials "knew helicopters were coming to
take part in a special exercise."
Asked if the helicopters were off course, he said: "It's extremely unlikely
because of the modern navigation systems on board. Until we know why they
were in the Goldfield area, we really can't say anything else.
"We're still trying to determine who they are," Estrada said. Howard
Vaughn, a Federal Aviation Administration flight standards manager in Las
Vegas, said the helicopter pilots may have violated a regulation that
prohibits them from operating at altitudes that would be a hazard to people
or property.
Grace Potorti, director of the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability,
criticized military officials for conducting a late-night exercise over
Goldfield residents when the unpopulated range is designated for that
purpose.
"It just gives me shivers to think about the fact that these people woke up
wondering if they were in a war zone," she said.
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997, 1998, 1999
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