The Inland Northwest received a bit of encouragement this week when the Senate Appropriations Committee signed off on a statement of support for keeping the 36th Rescue Flight right where it’s been for more than three decades at Fairchild Air Force Base.

But in the world of federal budgeting and policymaking, nothing’s certain until it happens. That means the bipartisan group of regional representatives and senators who have teamed up to defend the important helicopter unit will need to sustain the pressure against Pentagon plans, announced in February, to relocate the four UH-N1 Hueys.

The unit’s 19 military personnel and 22 civilians perform dual missions. Officially, they are assigned to Fairchild’s Survival School, which prepares about 300 airmen a year for the event of a crash or being shot down. The helicopters not only give trainees a realistic sense of trying to evade hostile copters, but they are critical in tracking down airmen who might be injured or lost during their training experiences.

That same capability, which is enhanced by hoists and night vision equipment, has proved a godsend to the region between Seattle and Great Falls, Mont., where the personnel of the 36th Rescue Flight routinely come to the aid of hikers and accident victims who need to be found and evacuated from the region’s vast and remote landscape. Since the unit was located here in the early 1970s, it has been credited with more than 600 rescues – about 20 a year.

From a military standpoint, of course, the rescue operations might be said to boil down to positive public relations for the most part with a measure of realistic training thrown in.

But helicopters have a valuable role at the Survival School, which is why most other survival training operations have them.

When the word came out over the winter that the administration would propose sending the helicopters elsewhere, the region’s congressional delegation set partisanship aside and moved into an imposing defense mode. Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers – even though on maternity leave for part of the time – managed to insert language into the House spending bill to require the helicopters to stay at Fairchild.

She and Washington’s Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell contacted the Pentagon on behalf of the 36th Rescue Flight. Murray and Cantwell pushed Senate legislation, and even Idaho’s Republican members raised their voices on behalf of the helicopters, which frequently pluck stranded Idahoans from the Panhandle’s rugged terrain.

Murray, a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, has managed to get the latest language added on the Senate side.

So far, none of these measures includes the $3.9 million appropriation it will take to pay for operating the helicopter unit, but Defense officials have said they’ll transfer the funds from somewhere else in the Pentagon’s $110 billion budget.

If that becomes a problem, they could always turn to the 36th Rescue Flight, which has an excellent record of finding small objects in large settings.