Crash and Salvage

Two Crash and Salvage crewman don and prepare firefighting equipment. Photo by Oswald Felix Jr.

A Family Forged in Flames

It always starts the same – the 5MC screams “Crash on the flight deck!” as the pitch-black night erupts into organized chaos. Blue, yellow, green and red scramble to their stations as a P-25 firefighting vehicle parts the sea of color, stations manned by aluminum-outfitted troopers. Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Airman Evan Gallegos rides in the back. He is a quiet, stern-faced, red-shirted P-25 rider, already drained from hours on the flight deck, sweating under a South China Sea sun. He steels himself for the drill and looks at his old boss, Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Alex Welsh, remembering how it started.

Gallegos began the deployment “Blue Side,” or as a basically-qualified plane handler but when he learned how Crash and Salvage, the flight deck first-responders, are “like one big family,” he wanted in. One day while sitting with Welsh, they convinced each other to take the leap. 

No one can be assigned to the division. Potential recruits are hand-picked by qualified Crash crewmen, background checked and interviewed shotgun-style on everything from why they deserve to join the team, to their work ethic and off-shift behavior. For Crash, there is no time for bad apples when every second wasted is a second closer to losing a life. Following the interview, the prospective gain is left hanging. Gallegos did not find out he was accepted until a month later when both he and Welsh, at the time a highly-qualified yellow shirt in charge of a work center, were ordered to the Crash shack.

“I was excited,” Gallegos reminisced. “Everybody [in the crash shack] was involved – it’s not just one person caring about you… Everybody cared, [asking me] ‘What do you need? What do you want help with? Just tell me, or anyone in the shack.’”

For trainees, the immediate support comes with equally daunting expectations. The Crash shack, tripling as the division’s headquarters, gear storage and break room, is about the size of a cubicle clump. In the back is a closet-sized, curtained room where the trainees sit without cellphones, television or music. For Gallegos and Welsh, the now equally-junior trainee, life was reduced to studying three manuals for hours each day. Senior crewmen check in regularly, but a trainee’s life revolves around qualifying and learning how to respond when a flight deck casualty is called away.

Nohemy Medellin dons firefighting gear. Photo by Oswald Felix Jr.

Trainees often start as strangers but quickly become tight-knit partners. All of the “suck,” as Gallegos put it, bonds them together. Junior partner groups usually know more about each other than anyone else on the ship, and quickly become reliant on each other for the physical and mental requirements of the job. Then they are plunged into the Crash and Salvage board, a regulation-mandated part of the qualification process and considered sacred among qualified crewman. The mental and physical rigors of the day are nothing to snuff at.

“Board day was the hardest day of my life,” exclaimed Gallegos. “It’s just you and your other juniors. You can’t talk to your seniors or ask them questions … It’s all on you and your team.”

The day is peppered with traditions, according to Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Matthew Orozco. To qualified Crash crewmen, it is more than a check in the box – it is a trial by fire.

“Not only are we accepting another crewman, we’re accepting another brother,” said Orozco, his face beaming at the ritual of it all. “This person has stuck with us through all the pain. They have gone through all the manuals, finished junior training, sweated everything out, and now it’s time for them to show us what they can do.”

 The trainee boards with the most senior line crewman, the leading petty officer, the divisional chief petty officer, and the boatswain (Crash divisional officer). The manual is referenced religiously and the mechanics of every aircraft are analyzed until the trainee is mentally drained from the effort.

Then they are thrown into a two and a half hour-long, real-world flight deck evolution. Suddenly the seniors are screaming, creating stress to emulate a real disaster. Motivation comes from the job to be done and their fellow juniors. When someone comes close to falling, it is the trainees who pick each other up off the deck, and when someone is on the verge of failing they push each other forward.

Nohemy Medellin dons firefighting gear. Photo by Oswald Felix Jr.

“You don’t want to let your fellow junior down,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Airman Moussa Doumbia, his Ivory Coast heritage apparent as he spoke, “In French, the adage is ‘Ton amie c’est la personne que vous avez voyage et affamer ensemble.’ It translates to ‘your true friend is the person you traveled and starved with.’ This is what being a Crash crewman means, because we all endured the suck, but that’s what builds the brotherhood – the camaraderie, the family. We have all seen each other at our weakest moments. We have all seen each other with nothing more to give… But we get back up and continue because we take care of each other. One of our sayings is ‘Crash crew always works in pairs.”

But being joined at the hip can chafe. Crash crewmen spend more than 12 hours a day with each other, every slight and irritation building until an outburst is imminent. Their last argument was board night, after working a full 12-hour shift. Then add the mental and physical rigors of running a board, and all it took was one of the team not cleaning fast enough to sprout an outburst and subsequent argument. But before each disagreement can build into something more, someone will walk off or apologize and bring the team back to an even keel.

“There’s no time for [being angry],” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Airman) Isaias Rodriguez. “We’re watching aircraft launch every day and if you’re arguing you’re not paying attention. Now you’re already late to recognizing it and now you’re going to be a minute late to getting ready. Now someone might die because you’re arguing, and that’s unacceptable.”

Crash crewmen understand the gravity of their responsibilities. Training is designed to instill a relevance to every action. For six hours a day, watching the sky becomes keeping a bead on aircraft as they launch and land, while driving the P-25 goes from a joyride to strategically eliminating blind spots. Drills, previously receiving sluggish reactions, become high-stress and expedient responses. This fury of action is what separates Crash from everything else.

Alec Beasley dons firefighting gear. Photo by Oswald Felix Jr.

Red-shirted Crash crewmen are lateral-conversions from the usual flight deck pipeline, diverging from plane handling and instead honing in on emergency response. They do it all. Managing on-scene personnel; clearing safe routes; overhauling a scene (fighting fires, fuel spills or electrical casualties using CO2; Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF), or water); rescuing trapped personnel; entering damaged and dangerous aircraft manually (requiring in-depth mechanical knowledge of every aircraft on-deck) or through forced entry without activating explosive sealant; removing personnel without causing further harm, clearing aircraft from the flight deck; and as a last-ditch effort, using a crane to dump burning aircraft into the ocean. All of this information is ingrained and stored, and each Crash crewman expects the aluminum suit behind them to know the same.

“I trust them to save not just my life, but everybody else out there as well,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 1st Class McKinley Martin, the team’s leading petty officer. “That’s the foundation of being in Crash – being able to trust your peers, counterparts, and leaders … when it matters, we are united.”

The walls of the cubicle-sized Crash shack are covered in gear – helmets, bandanas, jerseys and coats, shelves of manuals and dangling instructions. In the clutter, a small portion of a wall is cleared, layered with Polaroid and printed photos of the Crash family, both long gone and newly-gained. That wall changed Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Airman Nohemy Medellin’s life.

Medellin’s first impression of Crash was of unnamed red-shirts sitting on flight deck tractors while everyone else worked. In 2019, she was “voluntold” to train with Crash crew. They showed her some of the job, and “welcomed her with open arms, like a family.” She never planned on joining before the experience, but she eventually found herself in that team. After going back to the blue-shirt side of the flight deck, she lasted a month before running back to Crash. She forced her way in – barreled through the interview, marched into the shack, pulled on a red shirt and announced “I’m Crash now!” becoming the only female on the team at the time. Since then, she has devoured the training, the qualifications, and rose to become a P-25 driver while teaching juniors and qualifying drivers. She loves every moment and when she is not driving, spot-checking suits and axes, or qualifying Sailors, she is making sure the rowdiest of the Crash crew are looked out for.

“These are my guys,” said Medellin. “They’re family. I’d risk my life for every single person in here.”

Risk is a part of being in Crash. Putting out a fire as the flames lick at ordnance or smashing a canopy lined with explosive film is dangerous and naturally leads to the team looking out for one another. Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Airman Jaylen Patterson, affectionately called “Patty P,” started the post-board, cleaning-too-slow argument by yelling and ended it by walking away – but his team, and the family dynamic they foster, keeps him steady. After a hard day on the flight deck, he walks into the shack to music blaring, slumps onto the couch, and within seconds he is swarmed by questions like “Patty what’s going on? What’s happening?”  He lies, says he is “okay,” and before he knows it they come in for a hug, and he emerges on the other side feeling a little bit better.

“This means something,” said Patterson, gesturing to his crew. “For the ship, if we don’t have a Crash crew, we can’t do flight ops… But [being in Crash crew] with my friends is a blessing. We help each other through everything. I love them. They’re my brothers and sisters. They’re family.”

Quiet and exhausted, Gallegos looks into the night. He is a Crash crewman through and through. In his subconscious he carries the memories of his board, the expectations of his partner, and the trust of his crew. Orozco screaming, Medellin checking his mask, Patty P pulling him into a sweaty hug, and Doumbia urging him forward, telling him that Crash crewmen “run toward the danger and let the rest of them join us later.” He flips down his visor, faces the barricade, and knows Crash crew works in pairs. And while others may fear the flames, his family is forged by fire.

Nohemy Medellin in firefighting gear. Photo by Oswald Felix Jr.