Established in 1943 as Altus Army Air Field, the base has spent more than 80 years training pilots, boom operators, loadmasters, and maintenance crews, now serving as home to the 97th Air Mobility Wing and its KC-46, KC-135, and C-17 training missions. Protecting that aircraft fleet has always required dedicated fire protection personnel, and decades of aviation fuel fire training left Altus firefighters working directly with AFFF. The installation's World War II-era origins also mean many older buildings on base were constructed with asbestos before modern regulations limited its use.
Aircraft rescue and firefighting has been part of the mission at Altus since the base opened in 1943, and like other Air Force installations, its firefighters trained with AFFF because it was the military's standard tool for extinguishing aircraft fuel fires quickly. Training exercises included live-fire drills, aircraft fire simulations, aircraft rescue drills, fuel spill scenarios, fire suppression equipment training, foam application exercises, and emergency response training, often repeated many times over the course of a firefighter's career.
For decades, the AFFF used in these exercises contained PFOS and PFOA, PFAS chemicals that were standard in legacy firefighting foam across the military. Firefighters came into contact with the foam while mixing concentrate, operating hoses during live-fire drills, extinguishing simulated fuel fires, testing proportioning systems, cleaning vehicles and equipment, servicing foam storage systems, and running crash rescue exercises, exposure that frequently involved direct skin contact and inhalation of aerosolized foam.
The following roles at Altus involved the most direct contact with AFFF:
- Air Force Fire Protection Specialists
- Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting personnel
- fire instructors and firefighter trainees
- civilian firefighters assigned to the base
- personnel who maintained firefighting equipment and foam systems
Studies have connected AFFF exposure to a higher risk of kidney cancer and testicular cancer among firefighters who trained extensively with legacy formulations. If you served in a firefighting or fire protection role at Altus and were later diagnosed with one of these cancers, you may have grounds for a claim.
Altus was built during World War II, a period when asbestos was standard in military construction because of its fire resistance and durability. The base's older buildings commonly contained asbestos in:
- duct insulation
- calcium silicate
- boiler coating
- cement siding
- ceiling tiles
- furnace cement
- wallboard
- joint compound
- gaskets
- roof coating
Maintenance, repair, and renovation work in these older buildings has always carried the risk of disturbing asbestos-containing materials and releasing fibers into the air, which puts certain occupations at greater risk than others:
- Engineers
- Welders
- Electricians
- Aircraft Workers
- Carpenters
- Pipefitter/Utilitiesman
- HVAC mechanic
- civilian contractor
The two diseases most closely tied to this kind of exposure are mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that forms in the lining around the lungs, abdomen, heart, or testes, and lung cancer, which develops directly in the lung tissue, both after asbestos fibers are inhaled or swallowed. Because they can take 20 to 50 years to appear, a diagnosis often arrives long after someone's time at Altus has ended, sometimes catching veterans off guard about the connection to their service. If asbestos exposure at Altus Air Force Base led to your lung cancer or mesothelioma diagnosis, we can help you pursue the compensation you're entitled to.