Local Civil Air Patrol responds to emergency beacons, conducts damage assessment flights
Posted on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
ROGERS — After tornadoes and high winds struck northwest Arkansas Sunday evening, the Arkansas Wing of the Civil Air Patrol was activated early Monday morning to conduct damage assessment flights and to deactivate aircraft emergency beacons set off by storm damage.
The Arkansas Wing’s 115 th Composite Squadron in Rogers launched a six-person ground team under Lt. Holly Jones at about 7 a.m. after being activated by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. The center’s satellites had picked up numerous emergency beacons transmitting from the Bentonville-Rogers area. Shortly after leaving 115 th headquarters at the Rogers Municipal Airport, the team picked up the signals and eventually pinpointed their location at the Bentonville Municipal Airport.
At the Bentonville airport, the team discovered 11 planes that had been damaged enough that the emergency beacons had been accidentally activated. Jones’ team deactivated the beacons on those aircraft.
While the ground team worked at the Bentonville airport, a Civil Air Patrol aircraft, also from the 115 th, with Lt. Col. David Winslow and Maj. Marina Scott aboard, flew over northwest Arkansas to determine if emergency beacons had been activated elsewhere. This was necessary because, when multiple beacons are activated in a small geographic area, it is difficult to determine exactly how many are transmitting at the same time and whether they are at the same location. No other beacons were heard. After those at Bentonville were shut down, the air crew returned to Rogers.
At the request of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, an Arkansas wing air crew from the 85 th Composite Squadron in Fort Smith was also sent to Benton County, where the crew took aerial photographs of damaged areas that included Gentry, Centerton and Bentonville. The crew, Lt. Col. Scott House and Capt. Frank Maslakow, took digital photographs that were transmitted via satellite cell phone from the airplane to a Web site, where they are available for viewing by emergency managers on the ground.
The Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, has participated in search and rescue and other emergency response activities in Arkansas since 1941. Nationwide, the CAP conducts about 85 percent of the inland search and rescue missions assigned by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Besides its wellknown search and rescue and disaster relief operations, the CAP has a youth leadership development program for young people from 12 to 18 years old.
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