The 120th Airlift Wing of the Montana Air National Guard made its first cargo drop on its new drop zone near Power on April 6. It’s a “long time coming,” said Brig. Gen. Trace Thomas, commander of the Montana Air National Guard, who previously commanded the 120th. He was a fighter pilot who transitioned to cargo pilots when the 120th
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The local 911 dispatch system went down for several hours in the early hours of March 3. The outage was due to maintenance on a fiber optic line that apparently caused a multi-county outage for cell coverage, affecting the 911 dispatch system from about 12:30-3 a.m. on March 3, according to multiple local officials. A reader contacted The Electric on
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Col. Jen Cinq-Mars formally assumed command of the 219th RED HORSE from Col. Todd Mortag on Jan. 10, though she’s been filling the role since November. The unit is the Montana Air National Guard’s Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers, an expeditionary engineering unit that provides infrastructure and heavy construction support for disaster response, humanitarian assistance and federal contingency
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Great Falls Fire Rescue responded to two “significant” grass fires on Nov. 11 that ignited within minutes of each other. The first grass fire was reported at 11:32 a.m. and was spotted just south of the Great Falls city limits on 13th Street South near Country Home Lane. The fire burned a significant amount of acreage, but the total has
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Shortly after 10 a.m. Sept. 25, an alert came across the radio in a Great Falls International Airport law enforcement truck and over the loudspeaker in the Montana Air National Guard Fire Department. The alert, which was to kickoff an exercise, was that the pilot of an incoming Boeing 737 was in medical distress. MANG fire crews responded to the
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Brig. Gen. Buel Dickson relinquished command of the Montana Air National Guard to Brig. Gen. Trace Thomas this weekend, and retired as about 150 members of the 120th Airlift Wing returned from deployment. Dickson has served as the assistant adjutant general of the Montana National Guard, commanding the air component, since June 2020 and before that served as commander of
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Codey McDonald deployed to Africa the day after his daughter’s first birthday in May. When he returned on Sept. 6, she was 15 months old. “There’s not really a better feeling,” he said of being home, tearing up holding his daughter. “She couldn’t walk or talk when I left.” It was a “great deployment, a great team and we’re all
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As the Great Falls community celebrates Memorial Day this weekend with ceremonies, camping and cookouts, about 150 airmen are en route to Africa for a few months. The group left in waves with mostly cargo and a few airmen departing Friday on the unit’s C-130s and the bulk of the airmen left Saturday morning. At 5 a.m. May 23, airmen
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Maj. Gen. Pete Hronek, Montana Adjutant General and director of the Department of Military Affairs, is retiring on June 7. Gov. Greg Gianforte announced on May 20 that he has appointed Col. Trenton Gibson to replace Hronek in those roles. The change of command ceremony is scheduled for June 8 at Fort Harrison in Helena. “I’m grateful to General Hronek
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The 83rd WMD-Civil Support Team of the Montana National Guard was training in Great Falls this week. The Helena based team is made up of five Air Guard and 17 Army Guard members that would respond to incidents with suspected chemical, biological or radiological threats. Lt. Col. Jason Steichen, 83rd commander, said they’d been in Great Falls this week for
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