While backpackers and campers prepare to head into the wilderness in the coming weeks as summer nears, volunteer flight crews and cadets from seven Washington state Civil Air Patrol squadrons — including Lewis County — participated in a search and rescue exercise on Saturday.
Flight crews used the Chehalis-Centralia Airport as a base of operations and refueling station while flying observational and communication relay flights out over the skies in Lewis, Clark and Thurston counties. Lt. Col. Sid Wiggs, Civil Air Patrol Fort Vancouver composite squadron commander, was the acting incident commander and briefed the flight crews on their general objectives. Wiggs has volunteered in the Civil Air Patrol since 1991.
While no real world natural disaster was actively taking place in Southwest Washington, Wiggs said warming temperatures causing snow melt could cause a temporary rise in river, reservoir and lake levels, which leads to risks.
“We always have flooding and landslides in the Pacific Northwest. We know exactly what kind of snowpack we have. We know how warm it has been the last couple of days and how fast the snow is melting,” Wiggs said.
The mission of flight crews was to observe and photograph areas throughout the Lewis and Toutle river valleys, the Cowlitz, Chehalis, Nisqually and Naches rivers, Spirit, Riffe and Mayfield lakes as well as many of the dams in the area. The photographs taken by the Civil Air Patrol are available to local municipalities if they want to see what infrastructure looks like from the air or what condition it is in.
Additionally, flight crews were to fly near Mount Rainier to act as a radio communications relay point between the incident command center Lewis County auxiliary squadron outpost at the Centralia Christian Church and another squadron based in Yakima.
Once a safety briefing concluded, the flight crews broke off into individual groups to map out their flight plans and prepare for the exercise. Then they set out in their Cessna 172s and 182s.
Aside from acting as the command and communications center for the search and rescue exercise, Civil Air Patrol volunteers set out from Centralia Christian Church with ground search teams using small unmanned aircraft systems.
An additional volunteer also hid a practice SOS beacon for the other Civil Air Patrol members to locate.
The training on Saturday was necessary not only to give members of the Civil Air Patrol practice in engaging in search and rescue operations, but to keep them up to date on their required flight qualifications.
“Our goal is training, so we’re trying to hook everyone up with as many items that can give training as possible. So you should see that on your first sorties,” Civil Air Patrol Captain Andy McDonald said to flight crews.
Other Civil Air Patrol auxiliary squadrons that participated included the Paine Field, Fort Vancouver and Yakima composite squadrons.
Wiggs added Washington state Civil Air Patrol (CAP) squadrons will be participating in a much larger, three-day search and rescue exercise at the end of June with squadrons from Oregon practicing for other natural disaster scenarios.
“I think the exercise name is ‘Cascadia inferno,’ so I’m assuming it’s going to have something to do with wildfires,” Wiggs said.
CAP’s website states, “founded in 1941 and established as the official civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force seven years later, Civil Air Patrol is chartered by Congress as a nonprofit organization for the purposes of youth development, aerospace education and to promote general aviation. In an auxiliary role … of the Air Force, CAP operates the world’s largest fleet of single-engine aircraft for search and rescue, disaster relief, training and education.”
A total of 26 CAP auxiliary squadrons currently exist in Washington. For more information, including how to get involved, visit https://wawg.cap.gov/.
For more information on the Lewis County auxiliary squadron, visit https://www.lewiscountycap.org/.
