July 18, 2009

"Apocalypse Now!" - Los Banos Style?

A couple of weeks back a hellicopter flew sortie after sortie over Los Banos California. Was it Francis Ford Coppola here to direct part two of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now!" with Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall in tow? Well.. no, not really.

The chopper 'missions' being flown over Los Banos High School a couple of Saturdays back were actually something a bit more mundane - though it did draw a small crowd of onlookers. The hellocopter that you may have heard if you were outside that day was ferrying air conditioning equipment to the top of several buildings at the school. The new equipment is part of a school district plan to implement a district-wide plan to save energy.

Samantha Salas wrote an article about this in Friday's Los Banos Enterprise and a couple of my photos appear with it. One is in the online version and a different one in the print version.

Here are several more additional photos to compliment those that were published by the Enterprise. You can see the story which is titled "District Installs Energy Savings Plan" starting on page B1 of Friday's news paper.

Here the additional photos that compliment the story:

Lifting chopper brings a set of hooks in for attachement to air conditioning units

The ground crew working to attach lifting hooks that dangle from the chopper to one of the many HVAC units that were being lifted into place atop the school buildings.

Similar shot to the above. Note that one of the gentlemen here is wearing a pilot's helmet and yellow jacket. It is my assumption that he was in direct contact with the chopper pilot.

Hellicopter hoovering over one of the attachment areas:

And up it goes! Another unit is pulled away from the ground and is lifted toward one of the rooftops of one of the high school buildings.
- this photo appears in the newspaper so will not appear here at this point-

Another lifting view

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According to the article in the Enterprise each classroom will have its own unit according to Dr. Tietjen.

Chopper lowers an AC unit into place

If everyone in Los Banos would just take 1 or 2 hours a month to do something to help their neighborhood or their community we could truly make Los Banos the gem of the valley.

The above is only my personal opinion and I strongly encourage readers to seek out more information from expert sources. Copyright 2009