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The Joint North Carolina, Virginia, & West Virginia Wing SAREVAL a Success

MER SAREVAL
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MER SAREVAL (click image to view full size)
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9/9/2013–

The 3 Day multi-state Search and Rescue Evaluation has come to a close after members from North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia came together to take part in a never before attempted joint evaluation where multiple wings and a region were operating at the same time.  CAP Members from all 3 states helped man aircraft, ground teams, and the incident command post to support a number of taskings set forth by the evaluators. Some of those tasks included; mock hurricane evacuation route reconnaissance, bridge and dam structure reconnaissance, simulated missing aircraft searches, simulated earth quake response, and missing hikers. 

Throughout the Weekend the Virginia Wing flew 28 sorties in 9 aircraft for a total of 49 hours, the West Virginia Wing flew 14 sorties in 6 aircraft for a total of 26.9 hours and here in the North Carolina Wing a total of 9 airplanes flew 35 sorties for a total of 69.5 hours over the 3 day period using 690 gallons of fuel; also 1 ground team sortie was completed as well.

 In an email congratulating the wing Monday morning NC Wing Commander Col David Crawford said, “I would like to thank everyone who participated in the SAREVAL starting as early as Thursday and continuing through late Sunday.  It was a lot of work across the wing and resulted in a successful completion of the evaluation.  Thanks to all the aircrews that flew multiple, long duration sorties across the state and up into VA, including aerial photography and high bird repeater sorties. Additionally I would like to thank the staff that traveled to Winchester VA to serve at the ICP across 2 very long operational days: Maj Jason Bailey, Maj John May, Maj Dennis Bissel and 1st Lt Tony Bradley.  NC Wing's efforts were recognized as being key to the overall success of this mission.  We demonstrated our ability to work with ICS staff from around the region and successfully execute complicated remote taskings.”

These training evaluations give members the ability to further their education while working with other CAP personnel outside of their home areas. By blending CAP members from all over the region they are able to train with the men and women they would be working with in the event of a real disaster of emergency situation.

For those members who would like to further their training to assist in future SAREVALs training and actual missions please contact your squadron ES Officer or check the North Carolina Wing Calendar to see what training is available.