CAP Accomplishes Training Goals during Spearfish Exercise
Rapid City, SD - Thirty-nine South Dakota Civil Air Patrol (CAP) members participated in a wing training exercise in Spearfish on Saturday May 20. The exercise allowed members to sharpen and put into practice their search and rescue and disaster relief skills, in accordance with standards.
“Our two main training scenarios were a missing hiker on Lookout Mountain and a private plane missing on a flight from Bison to Spearfish,” said Capt. Matt Tennant, CAP’s incident commander for the mission. We also used our unmanned photo drones to create a 3-D image of a Spearfish building as would be used for damage assessment.”
CAP’s incident command post was located at the Lookout Mountain Composite Squadron headquarters building at Black Hills Airport, Clyde Ice Field, near Spearfish.
“The weather tested us, but we completed our search and damage assessment assignments successfully and achieved the majority of our training objectives,” said Craig Goodrich, CAP’s vice commander in South Dakota. “We are volunteers, training to professional standards to benefit the local, state, tribal and national agencies we support.”
CAP in South Dakota, known as South Dakota Wing, has close to 400 members with units in Brookings, Custer, Miller/Faulkton, Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Spearfish and Tea. The wing can deploy its six aircraft, ground teams and small search/photo drones to assist in emergency response and other support to local, state, tribal and federal agencies in South Dakota.
CAP performs its search, disaster relief and other missions in its role as the U.S. Air Force auxiliary, part of the Air Force Total Force. CAP is aligned with First Air Force to rapidly respond to nonmilitary threats domestically when tasked in a Defense Support of Civil Authorities capacity to save lives, relieve suffering, prevent property damage and provide humanitarian assistance.
