Civil Air Patrol Steps Up to Support Post-Sandy Recovery

The Civil Air Patrol, the Air Force auxiliary, is currently engaged in “the largest aerial photo mission” in its history in support of FEMA’s post-Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts, according to CAP officials. One hundred aircrews from CAP’s Northeast, Middle East, and Great Lakes regions are taking overhead photos of more than 300 miles of coastline from Cape Cod, Mass., to Cape May, N.J., to help FEMA with damage assessment, states a Nov. 3 CAP release. “We will give FEMA the broadest view of what’s occurred as possible, which will position them to readily pinpoint the areas of greatest need,” said Col. Dan Leclair, mission incident commander as well as the head of CAP’s Maine Wing. The CAP crews are expected take more than 120,000 photos while capturing every square inch of this coastline swath during some 60 to 70 sorties and a total of 200 hours of flight time, states the release. (Concord report by Dan Bailey)