Fort Worth (WBAP/KLIF News) – Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth is taking hundreds of aircraft from areas affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Last week, airplanes arrived from Ellington Field in Houston; now, planes are coming from Florida and South Carolina.
“We were looked at by organizations like FEMA and NORCOM because this is a safe place to go. This is where we’re going to start staging the assets,” says Operations Officer Pat Coffey.
Coffey says NAS JRB will double in size this weekend. The base has 11,000 military and civilians.
“We can connect like aircraft and like services together for additional support,” he says. “That’s something that a lot of installations won’t have the benefit of.”
Coffey says the accessibility of each branch of military, plus the Lockheed plant across the air strip, make NAS JRB a suitable place for other bases looking for a safe haven.
“The Navy helicopters landed, and one of them had a problem,” he says. “We have a helicopter depot that works on those in Army. They walked over. Within minutes, the helicopter was up and full mission capable.”
NAS JRB housed aircraft from the Texas Coast during Harvey and had previously hosted aircraft during Hurricane Matthew last year, Hurricane Gustav in 2008 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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