Air Force Flies Emergency Supplies to Peru After Floods

Parts of South America have been underwater for weeks as heavy and torrential downpours have washed away city streets, buildings and, in some cases, entire villages in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

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At the request of the Peruvian government, the U.S. Air Force on April 4 dispatched two C-130Js from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. For the past week, Capt. Patrick Steppe, instructor pilot with the 61st Airlift Squadron, and his crew have been up and down in the Hercules, moving hundreds of thousands of pounds of equipment and food to stranded or displaced families.

Two aircrafts' worth of pilots, co-pilots, loadmasters, maintainers and security forces are on the ground in Lima, where daily work has been to deliver beans, rice, mobile generators, school supplies and potable water.

The roughly 30 airmen are from the 61st and 41st Airlift Squadrons; 19th Security Forces Squadron; and the 34th Combat Training Squadron, which provides tailored joint mobility training to produce combat-ready airmen and soldiers.

"We load up the cargo and then take it out to different airfields in the north of the country," Steppe said in a telephone interview with Military.com on Monday evening.

Collectively, the units have loaded and moved 280,000 pounds of cargo, said Senior Airman Alexandra White, the 61st's mission loadmaster.