Oregon Civil Air Patrol plans Saturday exercise

As the first day of summer approaches on Saturday, Oregon will be greeted with mostly sunny skies, warm temperatures and planes in the skies… Civil Air Patrol planes, that is.

On Saturday morning, the Oregon Wing of the Civil Air Patrol will be conducting a statewide emergency services training exercise that will involve CAP members and aircraft from across the state with operations centers in Aurora, Medford and Bend.

“The scope of the training exercises will cover a variety of potential real mission possibilities” said Col. John Longley, commander of the Oregon Wing CAP.

“Those scenarios will cover areas as natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and windstorms for example” he said.

Many disaster responses can include aerial reconnaissance to provide high-resolution photos of the damage, advise on transportation road blocks for relief and evacuation and also transport emergency supplies and personnel.

“We will also be training for a variety of search and rescue incidents to include lost persons, missing aircraft and ELT signals,” he added.

ELT, or Electronic Locator Transmitters, emit a homing signal when an aircraft is involved in an accident. Aircrews use those signals to pinpoint the location of the signal and advise ground teams to the location.

“We constantly train to hone the skills of our ground and air crews, train new members and incorporate new technology that makes our jobs more efficient and effective” added Lt Col. Richard Ouellette, the mission incident commander for the exercise.

Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with 61,000 members nationwide, operating a fleet of 550 aircraft.

It performs 90 percent of the country’s land search and rescue missions and is credited with saving an average of 80 lives a year. Its volunteers perform homeland security, disaster relief and drug interdiction missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies.