CAP wraps up Hurricane Ida aerial missions

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Civil Air Patrol’s Louisiana Wing flew the last two aerial sorties to photograph Hurricane Ida-impacted lands and waterways in late September.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness requested the images to use in assessing damage from the Category 4 storm, which made landfall Aug. 29, 2021, on the Gulf Coast.

“The people of Louisiana have been through so much with Ida. After Katrina, it is the second-most damaging and intense hurricane to hit the state of Louisiana on record,” said Lt. Gen. Kirk Pierce, commander, First Air Force, Air Forces Northern. “We wish our neighbors well and are grateful for the opportunity to provide assessment images as a step forward in their rebuilding efforts.”

The CAP mission began immediately after the skies over Louisiana cleared enough to allow precision flying. In total, CAP aircrews made 148 flights equating to 377 flying hours. They delivered almost 122,000 photos and more than 6,000 gigapixels of data to both government agencies.

The photographs cover 1,012 square miles of surface area. Although the imagery shows damaged areas in cities like New Orleans and Houma, much of the photos show Ida’s impact on smaller communities, such as Thibodaux, Galliano, LaPlace, Lafitte, Dulac, Chauvin, Point Aux Chenes and Montegut.

“It was an intense and challenging mission,” said Lt. Col. Mickey Marchand, the Louisiana Wing’s incident commander for the response. “However, our aircrews and support staff were up for it, and we gave our customers all they asked for.”

The mission involved eight of the wing’s nine aircraft. Two airplanes from CAP’s Texas Wing and one from its Tennessee Wing, along with their aircrews, joined the mission for several days.

More than 130 CAP members, including four from the Texas Wing and two from the Tennessee Wing, participated in the Louisiana mission. Eight ground vehicles were used for transportation.

During one flight, an aircrew spotted, reported, and photographed a partially sunken and leaking barge in the Mississippi River. The incident commander filed a “First Incident” notification via the state’s hazardous materials hotlines, leading ultimately to elimination of a dangerous navigational hazard and an environmental threat.

Established in 1941, Civil Air Patrol is the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. It operates a fleet of 560 single-engine Cessna aircraft and more than 2,100 small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) and performs about 90% of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions. Often using cellphone forensics and radar analysis software, CAP was credited with saving 130 lives in fiscal 2020. CAP’s 56,000 members also perform homeland security, disaster relief and drug interdiction missions at the request of federal, state, and local agencies. As a nonprofit organization, CAP plays a leading role in aerospace education using national academic standards-based STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. Members also serve as mentors to nearly 23,000 young people participating in CAP’s Cadet Programs.