Grissom hosts CAP training to improve disaster response Published April 30, 2014 By Tech. Sgt. Mark R. W. Orders-Woempner 434th ARW Public Affairs GRISSOM AIR RESERVE BASE, Ind. -- When disaster strikes, knowing what's happening on the ground is key to response and recovery efforts, and often providing that information from on high are members of the Civil Air Patrol. CAP officers from around the Great Lakes Region, which encompasses Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, flocked to Grissom to take part in a special training course meant to improve CAP's operational capabilities April 3. "This is a condensed course of Incident Command System processes and procedures," said Lt. Col. Carol Heeringa, Great Lakes Region director of emergency services. The ICS is a subcomponent of the National Incident Management System, which was released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2004 and standardizes on-scene emergency incident management. Under the emergency services umbrella, CAP performs functions related to search and rescue, disaster relief, humanitarian services, Air Force support, and counter drug operations. "We deal with emergency situations as small as a lost hiker or downed small aircraft all the way to a major disaster like what we saw with Deepwater Horizon and Hurricane Sandy," said Heeringa. "That's why the ICS system starts small, can ramp up to as large as it needs to be and then come back down again." Deepwater Horizon was the name of an offshore oil drilling rig that sank in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, resulting in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. "For Deepwater Horizon, we were one of the first out there, took all sorts of pictures and remapped the shoreline and watched the buoys used to help keep the oil from reaching the mainland," recalled Heeringa. "If one broke, we'd say, 'look here's a spot,' and they'd go and fix it." In that instance, the Coast Guard was the CAP customer who was requesting aerial photography and communication; however, CAP can have many customers. "Our customers include the Air Force, all other branches of the military to include guard and reserve components, [Federal Emergency Management Agency], state and county [emergency management agencies] and the Army Corps of Engineers," explained Heeringa. The purpose of this particular CAP training exercise was to improve CAP's response times to those customers. "These people have all be trained to do the jobs themselves, but we've noticed there can be a breakdown where stuff goes to planning and gets bottlenecked and planes don't take off for hours," explained Heeringa. "So, we're here to teach them how to move a customer request urgently and completely through so the customer is kept in the loop and things are meeting deadlines." "What we are trying to do is get CAP a little more functional when serving the community in regard to search and rescue missions and disaster relief," added Maj. Chris Nester, CAP Great Lakes Region director of operations. "We are trying to bring our crews up to speed on the ICS system and how it relates to CAP." One of the tactics suggested during the training was to give both planning and operations sections tasks simultaneously. "Give it to planning as it comes in, but also get the task over to operations so they can get the ball rolling because operations is going to look at it and immediately determine what they need to start doing," said Heeringa. Nester, who called the training invaluable, said it was a lead up to a two-day emergency services conference also held at Grissom. "So far, all our people are engaged and wanting to improve our ability to respond," he continued. Heeringa said one of the things that makes CAP itself so invaluable during an emergency is their ability to provide information from above at a fraction of the cost it takes other services. "We're cheap - probably less than $200 per hour, and you can't put a C-130 [Hercules aircraft] or [UH-1] Huey helicopter out there for that price," she explained. "Because we're volunteers they don't pay us; they cover the price of our fuel, travel and costs of lodging and per diem if we stay, but many times we are close enough to our homes where we just go back home at night." During those emergency situations, CAP aircraft and ground teams can be equipped with a variety of technology aimed at getting information back to first-responders and incident managers. "We will conduct aerial photography and air-to-ground communications from the sky, where we have everything from VHF radios to HF radios to [automatic link establishment] radios, which are secure so we can send images, emails and texts over that," said Heeringa. "Whatever a customer needs, we usually can help provide that for them." Common tasks for CAP emergency services teams include evaluating the status of transportation routes. "When a disaster strikes, the first thing CAP is going to be tasked to do is to take photos of all the roads, bridges, rivers, dams and traffic," explained Heeringa. To work with CAP on a mission base during an emergency, a CAP member must go through some extensive training. "There's a lot of individual task training," said the lieutenant colonel. "You start out as general emergency services, which you go through the laws and regulations and what emergency services does, and then you will then start on a ground team or on an aircrew as an observer or scanner, which helps the pilot look for things and work the radios." After serving in those basic capacities, Heeringa said CAP members can request additional training and move up into specialized fields at mission base. "We have task sheets and classes that have to be completed so you know what you're doing for all the crew and incident command positions," she said. "After you have all your training signed off and your commander gives you the go ahead, you have to complete two full missions to be qualified." And, educating its emergency services trained professionals isn't the only form education with which CAP is concerned. According to Heeringa, emergency services operations is just one of the tenets of CAP. "There are three propellers to CAP," she explained. "One is aerospace education; one is cadet programs that teach younger kids leadership; and then the third is emergency services, which is the propeller we're concentrating on here." To learn more about CAP, click here. Grissom is home to the 434th Air Refueling Wing, the largest KC-135R Stratotanker unit in the Air Force Reserve Command. Airmen and aircraft from the 434th ARW routinely deploy around the world in support of the Air Force mission and U.S. strategic objectives. Stay connected with the 434th ARW on Facebook and Twitter.
