Canada

Low-level flights

By PAUL OGRESKO

“From camping around the area at the end of the runway I was feeling different after the low level flying was done. I spent nearly two months there — I had sore ears and my body felt like something was wrong.”

Greg Penashue, president of the Naskapi Monthenais Innu Association, recalls the

~ demonstration last fall and winter when the

Innu camped at the end of the Goose Bay airstrip while thousands of NATO jets took off and landed. The fighter aircraft were taking part in “Western Vortex” — the low level flight training program.

When Penashue says something felt wrong he is probably right. Much remains to be researched on the health effects of sub-sonic (under the sound barrier) jet noise and sonic booms but the evidence that does exist is damning and points, irrevocably, to the destruction of Innu culture and the land and wildlife of Nitassinan.

One of those who knows from not simply a research angle, but from direct experience what sonic booms and sub-sonic jet noise means is Dr. Richard Barkin. He lives in Nevada, near a U.S. Integrated Air Wea- pons Training Centre, where sonic booms have become a part of life for residents near the site.

Speaking in St. John’s, Newfoundland recently, Barkin outlined both the physics and the health effects inherent in the air training. His conclusions paint a grim pic- ture of what is happening now in Nitassinan and an even grimmer scenario for the future if projects such as bombing ranges are expanded and the plans fora NATO Tacti- cal Fighter Weapons Training Centre

_ (TFWC) go ahead.

A sonic boom, created when an aircraft breaks the speed of sound, is not a sound in

~ the usual sense of the word. As Barkin des-

cribed, it is more like a slap in the face — something with force and with impact.

When an aircraft is flying at supersonic speeds it creates a shock wave that is con- stantly radiating off the nose of the jet in the concave shape of a cone. The faster the jet goes, the more the cone folds back — the angle of the cone becomes less as the sonic boom area, called the carpet boom, becomes larger.

Like a giant carpet being unrolled behind the jet, the boom area is 1.6 kilometres wide for every 350 metres in altitude. At 19,000 metres, the carpet boom is 80 kilometres wide — 40 kilometres to each side of the jet’s path.

One jet’s flight path can easily cover 16,000 square kilometres in 30 minutes.

“People can’t live under these areas,” Barkin warned. “You can say that from a medical point of view. The impacts (of the sonic booms) are so severe that if the government wants to go ahead with a pro- ject like this it has to buy the property if there are private property owners under- neath. If there are indigenous people there, the government has to deal with it somehow because (the flights) destroy a people’s abil- ity to live out there.”

The Department of National Defence (DND) has set up two operation areas for supersonic flying. The northern one goes right across the primary land use area of the Sheshatshit Innu. In addition, in the train- ing areas for low level flying, the fighters emit sub-sonic noise the effect of which effect on wildlife such as caribou has yet to be monitored. And while DND has claimed it can co-exist with the Innu its track record belies that.

“The Innu have provided DND with the location of their campsites on three separate occasions but it didn’t do any damn good,”

said Peter Armitage of the Native People’s ~

Support Group in St. John’s as he told how the fighters still flew over the camps. DND officials have said hearing a sonic

6 « Pacific Tribune, April 17, 1989

boom is like “hearing thunder,” but Barkin argues the impact is far more severe. A look at. the decibel scale — the measure of sound — bears out Barkin’s assertion.

A chainsaw emits sound levels of 105 decibels; the loudest thunder reaches 105 decibels; sonic booms vary from 105 decib- els to 150 decibels. In comparison, if you stood beside a Saturn rocket during lift-off you would experience sound levels of 160 decibels.

But the decibel level is only one aspect of the boom — there is also the pressure. The most intense thunder ever recorded was 1.5 pounds per square foot, a little less than the pressure given by the Concorde in its nor- mal flight. But the sonic booms at the Nev- ada test side — based on 14 tests. — aver- aged seven pounds per square foot. During one flight, the pressure went up to 20 pounds per square foot.

“When a (sonic) wave hits it will shift a trailer house off its foundations,” Barkin said. “It certainly blows out windows — we’ve had a water tower blown down and we are 25 kilometres outside the impact area.

“T don’t like my kids to sit by the window when we eat. You can go through the whole week without one but then suddenly — wham! — your window is blown out.”

Plans in the making for Goose Bay, if the NATO TFWC goes ahead, will almost cer- tainly mean the extension of bombing ranges — a move that will mark the death knell of Nitassinan, according to Barkin.

“Any area that is used for a bombing range can be considered territory that is gone forever,” he said. “It’s going to be too hazardous for human use. It will be far too expensive to decontaminate. The (U.S. Navy) has said that to decontaminate about 15 square kilometres of the (Nevada) site would cost them about $300 million.

“The land that is used for these ranges is not recoverable.”

Barkin explained that hilly terrain, such as in the Nitassinan area, will cause amplifi- cation of the booms due to reflections — which are basically sound waves bouncing off hillsides. The NATO flight paths, which are concentrated precisely in the river valleys — the Innu’s lifeline for hunting and fishing — will create even more intense shock waves.

“The boom usually hits in half a second. There is about a 100th of a second where the first pressure wave hits, a few fractions of a second when the pressure drops; then another boom hits. This is all generated by the same aircraft and this intense system of pressure pulses occurs within half a second

-and from fighter aircraft below 7,000 metres

within 2/10ths to 3/10ths of a second,” said Barkin.

DND is about to release an environmen- tal impact study on the flights’ effects. But regardless of its conclusions, given Barkin’s experience and research, the damage that will be done to the wildlife and the people of Nitassinan will be irrevocable if the militari- zation continues,

The Innu are determined not to give up.

“The feeling amongst the Innu people is strong, we use the word ‘solidarity,’ ” Penashue explained. “For 10 years our communities have been working very closely together. We are a society and a people who have lived here for 9,000 years — we are together on this thing.”

. There is one final irony in comparing

what has happened at the Nevada test site to _

the possible future facing Nitassinan.

At the centre of the Nevada testing range is a large hill. This hill has been acknowl- edged by the U.S. Navy to be a sacred site for the Paiute Indians, a place of spiritual and historical importance.

For the past decade the site has borne the brunt of heavy bombing. Its height has been greatly reduced — the area surrounding it turned into a moon-like wasteland.

‘a sonic assault’

F-4 PHANTOM FIGHTER JET... “a sonic wave that can lift a trailer off its founda-_

tions.”

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