U.S. Central Command | 3rd CAB Soldiers complete first day of flood relief

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3rd CAB Soldiers complete first day of flood relief

By Sgt. Monica K. Smith, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs

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Members of the Pakistani military help unload grain from the back of a CH-47 Chinook from the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, Task Force Falcon Aug. 5 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

SWAT, Pakistan (Aug. 5, 2010) - Soldiers from the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, completed their first day of disaster relief in Pakistan, Aug. 5. Due to the amount of rain Pakistan received from a monsoon in July, many roads were washed out, leaving thousands of people stranded in the Swat valley in Northern Pakistan.

At the same time in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, the Soldiers of the 3rd CAB, 3rd ID, named Task Force Falcon were entering their ninth month of deployment. From their neighboring location, TF Falcon answered the call and sent two Black Hawks and four Chinooks to rescue people stranded from the monsoon’s floods.

“We are bringing our two cultures together,” said U.S. Army Maj. Daniel Rice, from Atlanta, and the officer in charge of the 3rd CAB Soldiers working in Pakistan, called TF Raptor. “We rely on each other heavily for security and this is another opportunity for us to cooperate in different way.”

In their first day, the aircrews of TF Raptor, 3rd CAB, TF Falcon, flew a combined total of 34.1 hours moving 824 people from otherwise unreachable locations and flew in 33.1 tons of food for those they could not evacuate.