- Kulis Air National Guard Base
Kulis Air National Guard Base is a
National Guard of the United States facility inAnchorage, Alaska . The convert|127|acre|0|adj=on facility adjacent to and south ofTed Stevens International Airport is currently home to the Alaska Air National Guard's176th Wing .Kulis opened spring 1955 with the 144th Fighter-Bomber Squadron (a direct predecessor of the 176th Wing). After an informal vote among squadron members, the base was named after first Lieutenant Albert Kulis, a pilot who died in a training accident the previous November.
Kulis served as a major center for the coordination of disaster relief in the aftermath of the March 27, 1964
Good Friday Earthquake . Guard members quickly converted a base warehouse into a shelter for civilians rendered homeless by the quake with a makeshift dining hall and more than 100 beds. By midnight of that day, 97 of the beds were filled.Kulis would reprise this role less than six months later, when the
Chena River overflowed its banks, causing a devastating flood in downtownFairbanks in August 1967. Within five hours of the first call for assistance, the first of manyC-123 Provider flights began ferrying disaster relief supplies to Fairbanks, and evacuating area residents to Anchorage. Evacuees received food, shelter and medical attention at Kulis; others were housed at the Alaska National Guard's Camp Carroll, onFort Richardson . Over the next nine days the Kulis-based 144th Air Transportation Squadron (Medium) would fly 138 sorties with its C-123s and aC-54 Skymaster transport, carrying 2,371 people and more than convert|300000|lb|kg of supplies.Kulis received a major upgrade in 1977. More than $3 million was invested in a new composite maintenance building, an aerospace ground equipment support building and a new petroleum operations facility on base.
In 1990 Kulis became host to an additional squadron, as the 176th Wing added the 210 Rescue Squadron with six
HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters and fourHC-130 s—a specialized combat search-and-rescue variant of the C-130.In 2011, the 176th Wing is scheduled to vacate Kulis for new quarters on
Elmendorf Air Force Base , north of Anchorage. The property, which is currently leased from Ted Stevens International Airport, will revert back to the control of the Airport.ee also
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176th Wing External links
* [http://www.176wg.ang.af.mil/ 176th Wing website]
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