Civil Air Patrol members from around the state participated in a multi-day training exercise this past weekend, beginning The Pierce County Airport-Thun Field (PLU) in Puyallup, WA, served as the mission base, while five remote staging areas were activated across the state including Yakima, Spokane, Walla Walla, Bellingham, and Vancouver.
According to Colonel James Furlong, Commander of Washington Wing, “We called it the ‘Perfect Storm,’ and it is was a training exercise to test the readiness of our local members and to employ our aircraft, aircrews, and emergency services teams to assist state and national organizations during a simulated state-level emergency. We didn’t really know what twists and turns the training mission would deal us until it happened.”
This past weekend’s exercise was directly overseen by a field evaluation team from the U.S. Air Force and included various hypothetical scenarios ranging from simulated natural disasters, crashed aircraft, to terrorism incidents. “We look forward to these exercises all year,” Colonel Furlong added.
Responsibilities for CAP members working in the exercise included ground search and rescue, airborne reconnaissance and photography, as well high-frequency radio communications. CAP Cessna aircraft flew missions from around the state.
While specific details of the exercise were sparse in advance of the exercise, Incident Commander Major Brett Knapp notes that simply the name of the exercise inferred it was to be a busy weekend, “a ‘Perfect Storm’ is a particularly bad or critical state of affairs, arising from a number of negative and unpredictable factors, which in this context could include simulated events such as wildfires, earthquakes, missing aircraft or hikers, and more.”
Adult and youth members of the Washington Wing Civil Air Patrol regularly take part in homeland security and disaster preparedness exercises and response missions, assisting local, state and national organizations with crisis and terrorism preparedness. Most recently, Washington Wing members participated in OPERATION ARDENT SENTRY, which was part of the region-wide Cascadia Rising 9.0 earthquake simulation. CAP members worked alongside mission specialists from the Washington National Guard, FEMA, and many county sheriffs’ offices.
Civil Air Patrol, the longtime all-volunteer U.S. Air Force auxiliary, is the newest member of the Air Force’s Total Force. In this role, CAP operates a fleet of 560 aircraft, performs about 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and is credited by the AFRCC with saving an average of 80 lives annually. CAP’s 57,000 members also perform homeland security, disaster relief and drug interdiction missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. CAP also plays a leading role in STEM/aerospace education, and its members serve as mentors to 24,000 young people participating in CAP’s Cadet Programs.
Locally, Washington volunteers operate a fleet of 23 vehicles and 14 aircraft (Cessna 172s, 182s, and a 206, as well as 2 Blanik gliders) for inland search and rescue missions and cadet orientation flight instruction. The wing is comprised of 744 adult members (ages 18+) and 626 cadets (ages 12-21), organized into 27 squadrons, who contributed a value of $4.9 million in volunteer hours to their local communities and the citizens of Washington in 2016. Visit www.wawg.cap.gov for more information.
