Seventy-five members of Civil Air Patrol’s Minnesota Wing are on the ground in the Fargo, N.D./Moorhead, Minn., area filling sandbags and building dikes in areas threatened by the rising Red River.

“We’ve been checking and packing our gear and finalizing our call-down list for the past week in anticipation of getting the call,” said 1st Lt. Steven Parker, the St. Cloud Composite Squadron’s emergency services officer. Parker, a former CAP cadet, is a full-time student at St. Cloud State University who will be commissioned as a U.S. Marine Corps second lieutenant in May.

Twelve cadets and two senior officers departed St. Cloud Regional Airport Tuesday evening for the three-hour trip to the Fargo/Moorhead area. The St. Cloud squadron was working this morning south of Moorhead with CAP members from the Minnesota Wing’s Anoka and North Hennepin squadrons laying sandbags in flood prone areas.

A man in his 70s greeted the CAP vans as they rolled up.

“He was awfully glad to see us,” Parker said. “This is a situation where a community is in need of our support. We’re here to help in any way we can.”

The ride to the site and a quick reconnaissance of the area told CAP members all they needed to know about what they’re facing.

“Waterways running high and the saturated ground have created ideal conditions for flooding,” Parker said. “We’re going to be busy.”

Minnesota’s Hutchinson, Red Wing, St. Croix, Mankato and St. Paul squadrons have similar missions at other locations. Other squadrons are in route. Several senior officers and cadets are working at the mission base at Fargo’s Hector International Airport.

Weather conditions brought both relief and concern to Parker.

“The weather is ideal for working outside, sunny and in the ’50s, a far cry from the blizzard conditions we experienced during last year’s flood,” Parker said.

Ice jams on the Red River north of Fargo have slowed the rushing waters, but the warmer temperatures and sunshine will hasten their melt.

“That concerns everyone here,” Parker said. “We’re watching. It’s all we can do.”

“The flood fight is on again in North Dakota and Minnesota,” he said. “It’s go time.”

Maj. Paul Pieper, Minnesota Wing’s emergency services director, said Minnesota air crews are standing by to assist. “We just finished up a series of training missions in anticipation of supporting disaster relief efforts in the Red River Valley, as well as other areas of Minnesota threatened with flooding.”

Media Contact:
Maj. Richard J. Sprouse
Public Information Officer, Minnesota Wing
Phone: 800-366-8917, ext. 2511
218-820-2564
E-mail: richard.sprouse@mncap.org

Thanks to the quick actions of the CAP aircrew who happened to be in the area, the two people on-board were able to be quickly rescued.  Civil Air Patrol aircraft routinly monitor emergency channels, even when not on a mission.

“Eighty percent of the shoreline in Hawaii does not have a fixed base siren,” said Hawaii Wing Commander Col. Roger Caires. “CAP aircraft are the only resource for issuing tsunami warnings, via a speaker system attached to the outside lower portion of their plane’s fuselage.”

Nine Cessnas with full crews are flying pre-assigned warning routes around the islands to look for anybody on or near the shoreline. The planes began sounding the tsunami warning at 6 a.m. Hawaii time, five hours before arrival time.

In addition, CAP’s Pacific Region Incident Command Response Team, made up of 20 highly trained members who can dispatch within four hours, is preparing to deploy to Hawaii if needed.

“I am proud of our members,” said Caires. “They again met the standard of being ready to launch within one hour.”

The plane was located in the Lytle Creek area of San Bernardino County. The teams had been assigned to search the area after the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center obtained possible radar tracking data from the FAA pointing to the site as one of the more likely places the aircraft might be found.

The wing was alerted Wednesday night by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. The Cessna was overdue at Compton/Woodley Airport after leaving Henderson on Monday.

Although the Civil Air Patrol search aircraft had to land due to bad weather, they were able to pickup the missing aircraft’s distress beacon and determine an approximate  location.  The ground search team located the two pilots, who were injured and trapped in the aircraft.  Both survivors were taken via helicopter to Desert Regional Medical Center.

For more information, click on the links below:

KPSP Local 2 News

KESQ News Channel 3

The Civil Air Patrol was credited by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center with saving 72 lives in fiscal year 2009.

A CAP photo of the crashed Piper PA-28 Cherokee found in the Talladega National Forest 70 miles east of Birmingham, Ala., on Christmas Day.

Click here to read the official release.

“The Civil Air Patrol spotted eight of the stranded individuals and were able to help redirect ground crews to their locations,” said Senior Airman Christopher Uppling, AFRCC search and rescue controller.

In total, 54 stranded individuals were rescued while one person was found deceased.

Click here to read more from WTVY.

The Piper PA-30 aircraft reportedly went down five miles northwest of Port Mansfield. The Coast Guard, Air Force, Civil Air Patrol, Texas Parks and Wildlife and Texas Department of Public Safety are searching for the plane and two people that were aboard the twin-engine aircraft.

The plane left Borger, in the Texas Panhandle, Thursday night en route to Port Mansfield.

The Piper PA-30 twin engine was found in a wooded area near Russelville in Greenbrier County, W.Va. The Pilot, Dr. Kwan Kwok, did not survive the crash.

The West Virginia Wing of the Civil Air Patrol was alerted early Sunday morning that the aircraft was reported missing.