Six Oregon CAP aircraft participated in the extensive series of responses for assistance involving over 35 people contributing over 300 man hours through the weekend.
It was all simulated. Nothing really happened. The hypothetical terrorist attack in California was treated as the real thing however by Oregon and California Wings of the Civil Air Patrol who were part of a six state pacific region Homeland Security training exercise this weekend.
The exercise, planned and coordinated with the United States Air Force and the Department of Homeland Security, tasked the six state pacific region of the CAP including Oregon, Washington, Nevada, California, Hawaii and Alaska, with a multitude of potential terrorist themed scenarios with the respective wings responding to realistic forecasts of requests from federal and states agencies.
Most of those tasks involved aerial reconnaissance, Satellite Digital Imaging and utilizing portions of the CAP's extensive nation wide communications network but also involved emergency transport of personnel and, in one case,a specially trained tracking canine from Washington to California using CAP aircraft from Washington, Oregon, and California .
For the first time, Oregon CAP utilized it's new airborne public address system.
With this new system, the CAP is capable of flying over a designated area from 1000' and, by utilizing a high powered speaker, able to warn persons on the ground of an emergency such as an approaching tsunami, a lost child or other situation requiring public action on the ground. The system has a range of over 1 mile from the aircraft.
Major areas of activity in Oregon involved southern Oregon with a mission base at the CAP's Incident Command Center at the Medford Airport and the Portland metro area operating out of the CAP's ICP at the Aurora State Airport.
"The missions we have been tasked with this weekend help us in preparing for a variety of incidents that we are capable of responding to, not only Homeland Security" remarked CAP spokesman, Major David Rudawitz, Oregon CAP director of emergency services."
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