HERE’S A LINK to the KING-TV (NBC, channel 5 in Seattle) video (above): http://www.king5.com/news/local/Port-Angeles-mayor-says-JBLM-should-have-warned-city-215398871.html
(The video can also be played at the end of this story.)
Here’s the KING5 story that accompanies the video:
(Mayor Kidd says that she driving down to Joint Base Lewis-McChord at her own expense.)
Port Angeles mayor to meet at JBLM about disruption
The mayor of Port Angeles will attend a meeting at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Monday. The mayor is concerned about helicopters that buzzed the city Thursday night during a training operation.
Normally a quiet town, especially at night, residents weren’t sure what was happening.
One man shot video and people called 911, but operators didn’t have any answers.
“We didn’t know where they came from,” Mayor Cherie Kidd said.
Kidd said they spent hours trying to figure out what had happened and eventually the army confirmed it had been conducting a training exercise with Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters from JBLM.
The mayor wants to know why they weren’t informed about the exercise.
The coast guard commander told Kidd he had allowed the helicopters to land, but didn’t realize no one was informed of the exercise.
“They should have notified us so we could have had a way to communicate and not frighten our citizens,” said Kidd.
The quiet has returned to the town and they hope it continues on uninterrupted.
