CTWG: Connecticut’s Civil Air Patrol Fly’s Missions to Test Disaster and Homeland Security Readiness

The above aerial photos show properly performing infrastructure in the Barkhamstead area (top) and at the Stevenson Dam, Oxford, CT (bottom).

Photos by various volunteer CAP, CT Wing Air Crews

2 April, 2010 CONNECTICUT – Flooding damage across Connecticut is wide spread after the State received record rainfall this spring and specifically over the last few days. Ground water tables being saturated, high amounts of rain affected even normally dry areas resulting in wide spread flooding. Areas East of Hartford into Rhode Island were the hardest hit with roads and bridges undermined. Localized street and home basement flooding was widely reported

Launching multiple sorties today and yesterday, two Civil Air Patrol, Cessna 182 aircraft crewed with volunteer Pilots, Observers, Mission Scanners and Tactical Photographers from Connecticut Squadron’s tested out information gathering and dissemination techniques including tactical infrastructure photography. These images were transferred to CT Wing Headquarters-Operations, the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security here in Connecticut and to First Air Force at Tyndall Air Force Base, Panama City, Florida for analysis.

In this controlled simulation CAP air crews were looking for areas of strategic importance that may need immediate assistance as well as gathering general documentation for possible federal disaster assessments. The object of the test included examination of aerial photo resolution as well as the security and quality of various data transmission methodologies.

If air or ground forces were immediately needed, the 700 plus members of the all volunteer Connecticut senior and cadet squadrons stand ready to deploy 24/7/365. They are trained for search and rescue as well as disaster services and food and shelter assistance and can provide manual labor for emergency activities such as sand bagging.

The above simulated disaster services exercises were conducted as part of a grant by the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management Services, Homeland Security. The grant is administered by Major Jack Shapiro (CAP) serving as the tests Incident Commander.