"Brad" wrote in message
...
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Navy air base in
Pensacola, Fla., suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damage
from Hurricane Ivan, the Navy said Friday.
Ninety percent of the buildings on base received
"significant" damage.
Naval Air Station Pensacola is where every Naval aviator
gets his or her wings. About 15,000 airmen aviators and crews are
trained there annually.

What does the UPI know? Actually, no aviator gets his wings there. Strike
grads get their wings at Kingsville or Meridian. Maritime grads at Corpus.
Helo grads at Whiting. NFO's probably do get their wings at Pcola these
days. Most of those 15,000 are various enlisted schools grads. When the
Navy realigned Memphis, all of the training went to Pcola (kind of a nice
consolation prize after losing the NADEP). And a couple 100 million dollars
in construction to recreate what was in Memphis at NPA.

R / John

There were no reported deaths or injuries on the base.
Roughly 2,900 sailors were staying in local shelters and helping the
American Red Cross unload supplies and food, the Navy said.
Most of the base roads were impassable and power generators
were fueling only selected buildings Friday.
The base public affairs office, including the photo lab, was
destroyed. The Coast Guard station was also reported destroyed. The
Naval Air Technical Training Center was completely under water.
The naval hospital was intact, but lost 80 percent of its
roof. There were no reports of damaged aircraft.
Soldiers from the Florida National Guard were to arrive in
Pensacola Friday to help with relief efforts and Navy Seabees were
to assess construction and engineering efforts during the weekend.
Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba has not suffered serious
damage from any of the three hurricanes so far, a Navy official
said.