Brig. Gen. Patrick Mordente (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — One of Brig. Gen. Patrick Mordente’s first tasks when deploying to West Africa nearly two months ago was to assess the viability of Liberia’s international, single-runway airport and other supply channels into the Ebola-stricken region.
Tapped for his mobility expertise, Mordente, the 86th Airlift Wing commander at Ramstein, advised U.S. military leaders on the best way to get personnel, equipment and other resources to the area. He received the call Sept. 28 and was in West Africa in less than 72 hours.
“They needed a mobility specialist and they needed one pretty quick, so they sent me,” he said.
The logistics puzzle that Mordente helped piece together as the U.S. Ebola-relief mission got off the ground in early October has changed some in the meantime.
The establishment of an intermediate staging base at the international airport in Dakar, Senegal, has created another hub in the logistics pipeline. Most military air crews no longer are needed to ferry supplies all the way to Liberia, Mordente said.
“What you have in Senegal right now, on the air field campus, is a life support area where people can work, sleep, eat and operate,” Mordente said.
“That just doesn’t happen overnight,” he added. “The Senegalese have a vote in that. You work with local governments, the local air field officials. You come to agreements on a concept of operations … and you begin to build it.”
Two designated C-130 military cargo planes from the United States currently handle the final leg into Liberia This arrangement mitigates wear and tear on the Liberian air field and reduces the number of aircrews potentially exposed to Ebola, Mordente said.
“Doing what we’re doing today would not have been possible 45 days go,” Mordente said. “As the operation matures … there came a point in time where AFRICOM felt, ‘Hey, we’re ready now. Let’s go ahead and bring those C-130s forward and let’s place them there.’ ”
C-130s “don’t tear up runways like big, heavy aircraft there,” he said.
Mordente, now back at Ramstein, recently spoke with Stars and Stripes about his role as the first Air Force general officer in West Africa during the start of the U.S. military mission to help fight Ebola.
When Mordente first arrived in the region, he spent a few days with Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, commander of U.S. Army-Africa and at the time, commander of Joint Force Command Operation Assistance, to find out “where his focus was, what his priorities were,” Mordente said.
Of utmost importance were supplies to build emergency treatment units for Ebola patients and medical laboratories to run blood tests for the deadly virus.
“What you’re trying to do when you first go in from a mobility perspective, is, how can I bring resources there quickly to support the ongoing effort?” Mordente said.
Early on, it wasn’t known whether Roberts International Airport, located about 35 miles outside the capital Monrovia, could withstand multiple landings of one of the Air Force’s heavy transporters, the C-17. After arriving in Africa, Mordente talked to a military commander in Senegal who had surveyed the site, finding “the field’s more capable than we think,” Mordente said.
“So I was able to communicate that up to the right folks to say, ‘Hey, it looks like this air field is going to hold. Keep bringing the C-17s in.’ ”
In making recommendations to AFRICOM and U.S. Transportation Command, Mordente also considered other supply avenues, including seaports. While in Africa, he crossed paths with an Army lieutenant colonel wearing a hard hat. He was from Military Surface Deployment Distribution Command and was in the country to survey ports, including one in Monrovia.
“I touched base with him before I left. I said ‘hey, what was your initial take?’ There’s some limitations here, there, but it’s viable for surface ship movement” was the response Mordente got.
“If I have multiple ways of getting into a location, if one of those becomes challenging because of government restrictions or flow restrictions, then I can flex to those other lanes,” he said.
Unlike some of his military colleagues with whom he worked in West Africa, Mordente was not subject to a 21-day quarantine when he returned, having left the country before the Pentagon imposed mandatory controlled monitoring for all U.S. military personnel serving in the Ebola-stricken region. He was in Africa for only about a week, spending the rest of his 30-day assignment advising the mobility mission from the rear at Vicenza, Italy.
But he was still subject to twice-a-day temperature monitoring for 21 days while in Vicenza, he said. “A medic showed up at my office in the morning and in the afternoon. I was watched the whole time.”
Those measures were merely a precaution, he said. “I never had a concern that I had contracted.”
“Once you become educated about Ebola, you understand” that it’s a difficult virus to contract, he said. “I think education was the best preparation in going down,” Mordente added.
Still, he doesn’t downplay the seriousness of Ebola. “It’s a horrible virus once you contract it.”
When Ramstein started sending aircrews to Liberia more than a month ago, fears and concerns swirled at Ramstein, Mordente recalled. Some worried about what the Air Force was doing to protect the airmen traveling to the region and the local populace once those airmen returned.
Mordente addressed the issue head on with a vigorous education campaign. The base held town halls and posted several informational articles and a video on its website.
“I had a call out to all the local mayors: ‘If you have any questions, any concerns, about what we’re doing and how we’re operating, please by all means contact me,’ ” was his message. “I have not yet heard from the first mayor.”
Mordente said that as more has become known about Ebola, people’s concerns seem to have ebbed some.
“We’ve been extremely transparent this whole time,” he said.
