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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - On February 22 through the 24 the 181st Intelligence Wing (IW) and the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) partnered for the first time in a search and rescue exercise (SAREX) at Hulman Field in Terre Haute, Ind. During this exercise, CAP and local first responders supported by Air Guardsmen from the 181st IW, worked side-by-side, refining critical team building skills in joint command settings.
Traditionally the 181st IW provides logistical and facilities support to the CAP. This year, Racers from the 181st IW volunteered to provide weather updates as well as incident awareness and assessments to ground, air and command and control teams to increase safety and operational effectiveness. According to MSgt Greg Hrovat, “We have taken 12 years of combat operations and lessons learned and are applying those skills to assist the CAP in search and rescue operations.”
Exercise Restless Tomahawk is a yearly CAP exercise designed to train the CAP, 181 IW and other city and county first responders to successfully work together in the air, on the ground and in the command center to conduct search and rescue operations. This year’s multi-agency exercise included five CAP aircraft, multiple ground vehicles and canine search and rescue.
During the exercise the efforts of all organizations resulted in the recovery of a lost civilian pilot and a missing hunter. The aerial teams used airborne search grids while ground teams utilized signal direction finding equipment to search for and home in on the missing individuals. According to Master Sgt Hrovat, 181st IW members used the Geospatial Information Interoperability Exploitation Portable go kit (GIIEP) to provide “open source information to gather, plot and assess open source and search team data to provide CAP commanders a single-source common operating picture.”
Overall around 140 people participated in Restless Tomahawk from agencies such as the Riley and Vigo County Emergency Management Agency, the Wabash Valley Chapter of the Red Cross, the Riley and Seelyville Fire Departments, Vigo County Search & Rescue, the Hamilton Center and the Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES). According to Col Donald Bonte 181st IW Commander, “it is these multi-agency exercises that allow the Wing to hone our domestic operations skills and enable the Racers to better serve the Wabash Valley and State in times of crisis.”
| Date Taken: | 05.08.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 05.08.2013 13:42 |
| Story ID: | 106554 |
| Location: | TERRE HAUTE, IN, US |
| Web Views: | 52 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Racers train for search and rescue operations, by Lt. Col. Frank Howard, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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