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The wing began preparations Thursday for the hurricane by moving aircraft out of the path of the storm and alerting members to prepare for ground team, aircrew and mission base tasking. CAP liaison officers have been integrated into MEMA’s Maryland Joint Operations Center since Saturday.
The wing’s incident command post at Martin State Airport began operations Sunday, conducting damage assessment operations once the hurricane had passed.
“Our whole process is based on pre-planning,” said Col. Gerard Weiss, the command post’s planning section chief. “We have standard operational plans ready to go for scenarios such as search and rescue, disaster relief and safeguarding the wing’s aircraft during a hurricane.
As events unfold, these plans are activated and the wing springs into action.
Members had the opportunity in early June to practice responding to a very similar scenario during the biennial evaluation of the wing’s capability to safely and effectively execute the Air Force’s noncombat search and rescue mission. The scenario for this year’s evaluation, for which the wing received the top rating of “highly successful,” was a hurricane that caused extensive damage when it made landfall in Maryland.
As part of the exercise, the wing responded to tasking from MEMA by conducting air and ground missions to assess theoretical damage.
“We practiced activating our operational plans, and we used the same procedures,” said Weiss, who also served as an incident commander during the exercise.
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