FORKS — Stories have circulated for decades about residents stumbling across Air Force crews engaged in survival training in rugged forests of the West End.
The schooling — part of the Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion (SERE) training program coordinated out of the Fairchild Air Force Base — was the subject of a draft environmental assessment released in February.
Forks Mayor Bryon Monohon and City Attorney-Planner Rod Fleck reviewed the report.
“We flipped through it and said, ‘Oh, now we know what the stories are about,’ ” Fleck said in a recent interview.
Forks city officials did not comment to the Air Force on the study.
“It’s kind of an essential thing we need for our airmen going into war zones overseas,” Fleck said.
The assessment determined that training in areas of Clallam and Jefferson counties resulted in no significant environmental impact and recommended it continue.
Report coordinator John Guerra, an Air Force program manager for the National Environmental Policy Act, said Friday the training has been taking place since the 1980s.
Torture-resistance training, which is part of the SERE program, is not done during the survival classes on the North Olympic Peninsula’s West End, said Fairchild Air Force Base spokesman Scott King, adding he could not reveal certain details of the training.
“You try to evade capture and resist capture and escape if you can,” King said Friday.
Training areas
Training areas cover up to 11,836 acres of Olympic National Forest and state Department of Natural Resources property, and Rayonier Operating Co. LLC timberlands.
Only about 70 acres of the total are used for campsites and survival exercises, Fairchild training supervisor Todd Foster said.
Up to 50 Air Force crew members and 13 instructors — all unarmed — participate in the classes in five-day blocks, twice a year, in the spring and fall.
Training program participants learn how to find food and water, build shelters, evade capture and navigate their way out of trouble, both on their own and with the aid of helicopters that fly out of William R. Fairchild International Airport in Port Angeles.
The survival classes include rafting from public docks on the Hoh, Calawah and Sol Duc rivers.
Permit renewals
Permit renewals for the training are required for activities on DNR and Olympic National Forest lands, and permission from Rayonier.
They are expected to be granted by Dec. 31, Foster said.
The Air Force is still negotiating agreements with tribes and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Guerra said.
“We’re waiting to wrap that up,” he said.
Comments were sought from Jefferson County, where training occurs on the Hoh River, and from Clallam County, where former Rayonier regional land manager Bill Peach is a county commissioner.
Peach said he’s familiar with the program.
Maneuvers on Sol Duc
Peach, a former river guide, recalled the crewmen doing maneuvers on the Sol Duc.
“They spend a week in the woods and learn to live off the land and run the river,” Peach said.
“They’re just a bunch of guys from the city coming out on the coast.
“It’s good military training to toss them in an environment they’re not familiar with.”
The classes take place under the auspices of the 336th Training Group at Fairchild Air Force Base and also encompass ocean waters off Tillamook, Ore., during an overall two-week training period.
Foster said personnel wear field garb, not military uniforms, and do not carry weapons or engage in live fire.
“If you came across our training, you’d be invited in to have a cup of coffee with us,” Foster said.
“We’re out there not doing anything more than a Boy Scout troop would do, other than we maybe have more expensive equipment.”
The air crews master skills involving shelter, fire, food, water, signaling, personal protection, concealment and sanitation and hygiene.
The West End training includes tent camping, setting up shelter using natural materials, rafting and land navigation.
Helicopter
Classes include interaction with a 15-seat UH-1N helicopter, according to the environmental assessment.
The helicopter, which flies out of Fairchild airport in Port Angeles, is involved in training for one of the five days, according to the assessment.
It transits along the Washington coastline from Fairchild to Twins, then turns south to Forks, where the training is conducted, and returns to Fairchild.
Foster said the aircraft flies at a few hundred to 1,000 feet above land during the exercises and does not land.
The crews conduct vector training with the aircraft and learn to determine how far away they are flying.
The Forks area is the closest the trainees can get to tropical training, Foster said.
The training schedules for Forks and Tillamook are linked.
A typical regimen over two weeks includes transport by military vehicles from Fairchild to Forks on Day 1, tropical training from Days 2-6 in Forks, transport from Forks to Tillamook on Day 7, coastal and open-ocean training on the Bayocean Peninsula at Tillamook on Days 8-13 and a return to Fairchild on Day 14.
Assess environment
Foster said the Air Force has been obtaining multi-year permits from Olympic National Forest and DNR but that it had been “quite awhile” since an environmental assessment was conducted.
“Basically, it was time to do another one,” Foster said.
“We’re renewing everything based on exactly the same thing we’ve been doing.”
The assessment generated about a half-dozen comments — none negative, Guerra said.
Comments were received from the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, Jamestown S’Klallam and Quileute tribes, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Cape Meares Community Association in Tillamook, which requested more information on the program.
Olympic National Forest and DNR did not submit comments.
“We didn’t see any concerns,” DNR spokeswoman Carrie McCausland said.
Public notice of the environmental assessment was published in the Peninsula Daily News on Feb. 11.
Guerra did not know when the final version of the environmental assessment would be released.
The report is available at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-survivaltraining.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
