Air National Guard changes in Alaska could affect national security, civilian rescues, staffers say

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Kristin Paniptchuk’s water broke on Christmas Eve at her home in the western Alaska Inupiat village of Shaktoolik, and then she began to bleed profusely.

The local clinic in the tiny village of 200 people on the Bering Sea couldn’t stop the bleeding or the contractions brought on by a baby that wasn’t due for another two months. With harsh winds grounding an air ambulance from nearby Nome, medical staff called on their only other option: the Alaska Air National Guard. Five days after a military helicopter and then a cargo plane whisked Paniptchuk to an Anchorage hospital, she delivered her daughter Kinley, premature but healthy.

Over the past year-and-a-half, Paniptchuk, whose daughter is now a toddler, has been thinking about how lucky she was.

“I’m just really thankful that they were able to come and get me,” she said. “Who knows what would have happened if they didn’t?”

The Alaska Air National Guard conducted 159 such missions last year in largely roadless Alaska, many during vicious storms. In one instance, a military helicopter flew nearly 660 miles (1,062 kilometers) to pick up a pregnant woman with stomach pains from an Alaska island 2 miles (3 kilometers) from Russia’s waters. Last month, two airmen armed with pints of blood parachuted into another western Alaska community to care for a woman experiencing internal bleeding because it was the fastest way to get there.

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