Navy Base Becomes Hub of Recovery Effort

Shortly after Flight 261’s spiral into the sea off Point Mugu, Ventura County’s Seabee base turned into the media and emergency center for the county’s first major airline disaster.

Reporters from all over the country trooped into the Navy base Monday with cameras and cables. Coast Guard crews brought in debris through the Navy’s deep-water port. And representatives from the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board are stationed at a command post on the base.

“It’s been a huge operation,” said Linda Wadley, spokeswoman for the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center. “I’ve never seen anything like it. But seeing everybody pull together has really been amazing.”

The Seabee base, one of the county’s two Navy facilities, houses about 3,000 sailors, many of whom deploy around the world to do disaster recovery and construction work for the Navy. The base also houses the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which provides maintenance, engineering and testing for Navy vessels.

Capt. James McConnell said Ventura County’s Seabees have never been called to assist in a major plane crash, but that they were prepared to respond to Monday’s accident.

“If a tragedy had to happen, there is no better place to deal with it than a Seabee base,” said McConnell, commanding officer of the base. “Seabees train for this sort of thing all year round. And we’ve got all the disaster equipment right here.”

Established in 1941, the Naval Construction Battalion Center recruited members from the civilian building trades to form an international emergency response team. During World War II, the Seabees built airstrips, warehouses, hospitals and houses.

Late last year, Ventura County’s Seabees returned from Kosovo, where they were building housing to support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s peacekeeping force.

They have also done disaster recovery work after local and statewide fires, earthquakes and floods.

When the Alaska Airlines plane crashed Monday, the Navy immediately opened a command center at the port to house the Coast Guard’s search and recovery mission. NTSB officials also gathered there to begin their investigation of the crash.

The Navy converted an on-site warehouse into a storage room for debris from the disaster. Over the next few days, crews would haul in pieces of the plane and belongings of the victims.

Another building became a makeshift morgue, where Ventura County coroners began the arduous process of identifying victims and body parts recovered from the crash site. As of Thursday, only four bodies had been found.

At the other end of the base, past armed security guards and various gates, reporters packed into an on-site movie theater. On the stage, more than 50 microphones adorned a podium for speakers to address the media. Outside, satellite dishes and television trucks crowded the parking lot.

The first day, television correspondents did live shots from the base at the top of every hour. As they waited for press conferences, reporters, photographers and cameramen drank coffee and snacked on doughnuts, candy and potato chips.

At 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, one reporter asked a colleague what time the 9 a.m. press conference was going to start. The reply: “The standard time. Late.” A few cameramen took advantage of downtime to snooze.

The Salvation Army also set up camp at the base, providing food for the Navy, Coast Guard and NTSB officials, as well as for the media. As an ordained minister, Salvation Army Capt. Michelle Scano and her colleagues were also on hand to provide grief counseling to families of the victims.

“Like the Salvation Army always does, we just want to make sure we’re administering [to] the needs of everybody, even if it’s just little things like water for the media,” she said.

Seabee sailors directed traffic and worked as security guards, keeping reporters from venturing outside the press center.

One of the guards, Petty Officer 3rd Class Rick Smith, 24, said he liked having the emergency operations and press stationed at the base.

“You can see all the action firsthand,” he said.