Several Lac La Biche residents were treated to a rude awakening at about 2:30 last Wednesday morning, by what could be described as the world's most expensive, well-coordinated, deadly, and highly trained alarm clocks.
Several Lac La Biche residents were treated to a rude awakening at about 2:30 last Wednesday morning, by what could be described as the world’ s most expensive, well-coordinated, deadly, and highly trained alarm clocks.
On the POST’ s Facebook page the following day, some residents reported hearing a sustained roar from the sky that lasted for several minutes. There was some speculation over what caused the noise, but it appears to have been a group of F-18 fighter jets whose pilots were working on some high-speed night moves in the skies over Lac La Biche.
Matt Strong, a public relations officer with 4 Wing Air Force Base in Cold Lake, confirmed that several F-18’ s were deployed from the base early that morning, flying towards Lac La Biche.
“F-18’ s from Four-Wing Cold Lake were conducting flying ops in the vicinity of Lac La Biche,” he said.
Strong couldn’ t confirm exactly what operations the pilots were performing, but said the Lac La Biche area is a fairly common flight corridor for operations stemming from the base.
“We use that [corridor] to transit up into other regions of our range; the range does skirt the edge of Lac La Biche,” he said, adding that base officials were sorry to have disturbed local residents’ sleep.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. In the future we hope to give you guys some warning before we fly over your town at extreme speeds.”
