**SO YOU WANT TO BE A RAPID RESPONSE UNIT**

By Rock Palermo, Lt. Col., CAP, 3/9/2001 DRAFT

### FAIRLY EVALUATE PERSONNEL 

### 

###  

**Number** -- The more personnel you have, the more likely you will be
able to respond to an incident timely and professionally.

**Depth** -- You should have sufficient number of mission pilots,
observers ***AND GROUND STAFF*** to ensure mission readiness.

**Qualifications** -- Encourage pilots to obtain instrument and
commercial ratings. Encourage all members to learn incident command
system and other emergency management procedures.

**Dependability/Flexibility** -- If you put your squadron in the system
you must ensure that your personnel can respond timely and
professionally. Look at where your personnel work, which ones have
flexible work hours or are retired. How many live within 10 minutes of
the airport? Can you field a crew within 30 minutes 24/7?

**Community Integrated** -- The more your personnel are integrated into
various aspects of the community, the more likely you will have a
dependable, qualified crew to handle your community's needs. A good mix
of industrial workers, civil servants, law enforcement and professionals
will likely provide a dependable and knowledgeable group ready to meet
your community's emergency response needs. This diversity will also
provide links to future missions.

# **[LOCAL NEEDS]{.underline}**

***Economy*** -- Look at what makes your area tick. Find out how an
airborne perspective would assist emergency managers.

***Traffic*** -- Look at the waterways, railways, highways, pipelines
and other sources of traffic. Do any of these provide opportunities for
CAP assistance?

***Environment*** -- Is the environment in your area threatened by
accidental pollutants? Identify governmental agencies that would benefit
from aerial surveys.

***Infrastructure*** -- Bridges, industrial complexes, waterways, power
generators, schools, etc. often need aerial photography to assist
emergency managers in planning.

## **IDENTIFY THE PLAYERS**

***Emergency Managers*** -- Typically the county director of the Office
of Emergency Management are responsible for emergency planning. They can
provide support, communications and direction on how your squadron can
assist the community with emergency services.

***Sheriff*** -- In some rural communities, the local sheriff is
responsible for disaster management.

***Fire Departments***-- They handle more than fires these days.
Hazardous material incidents and environmental emergencies are often
their responsibility. An aerial perspective can assist them in planning
and execution.

***Environmental Surveyors*** -- Environmental quality personnel,
wildlife/fisheries personnel need an airborne platform to properly
evaluate areas.

## 

## **SET UP MEETINGS**

***Be prepared*** -- Have ideas of how you can assist their department.
Bring birds-eye photos of points of interest. Be prepared to explain
CAP's structure, trained personnel, and regulations.

***Professional Presentation*** -- PowerPoint slides, brochures, and
CAP's website offer ways to make your presentation professional. Visit
the WMIRS site, a link to it is on the Emergency Services Page, to show
aerial photography to the customer.

***Use Lake Charles, Louisiana's experience*** on how a squadron has
assisted the community in emergency services missions by using single
frame downlink and flyback video.

## **Air Force Approved Memorandum of Understanding**

***Contact Wing or Squadron Legal Officer for assistance***. The draft
Air Force approved Memorandum of Understanding is available online. It
is an attachment to CAPR 55-1. Have a draft with you when you meet with
the customer to help outline what you can do for the customer.

***Identify Customer*** -- Identify the customer's needs and incorporate
them into the MOU. Normally aerial recon covers a lot of situations.

***Agree on Price*** -- The most beneficial relationship will provide
your squadron with a lump sum in exchange for your squadron to "show up"
when called upon. The lump sum should adequately provide for the costs
of the expected flight hours and related expenses. If the lump sum is
exhausted, then other arrangement should be provided for, such as the
payment of the hourly rate specified in CAPR 173-3.

***Keep it flexible*** -- Often when developing a new relationship with
an entity, it is best to have them pay for your flight hours by the
hour, as specified by CAPR 173-3. After the first year, you can
reevaluate the MOU and the assistance provided by CAP to the entity. If
your squadron has provided exceptional service, you may suggest that the
entity provide a lump sum in exchange for CAP services.

## **DEMONSTRATE CAPABILITIES**

***Interagency Drills*** -- How well you provide information to other
agencies is critical to CAP's success. Look for mutual aid drills in
your community to demonstrate your capabilities.

***SAR/DR Exercise*** -- Invite prospective agencies and customers to a
CAP SAR/DR exercise. Tailor the exercise to realistic incidents that
could occur in your community.

***Customer specific demo*** -- Plan an exercise specifically for the
customer.

***Observe Lake Charles Drills*** -- Many of the drills and exercises
performed by the Lake Charles, Louisiana squadron are on the Web Mission
Information System website. The photographs and mission summary can
illustrate CAP's capabilities to the local community.

***Response Time*** -- Emergency incidents will generally require your
aircraft to be on target within an hour of notification. Not all
incidents require a three-person crew. Some incidents may be performed
by a crew of two. Alphapaging systems greatly assist personnel alerting.

## **COMMUNICATION -- THE KEY!**

***800 MHz/Mutual Aid Frequencies*** -- Many response agencies are
moving away from VHF radios to 800 MHz. There are a variety of mutual
aid tactical frequencies on 800 MHz, which enable different agencies to
communicate during a common incident. Your ability to communicate with
incident command is ESSENTIAL to safety and mission success. Some
communities use VHF mutual aid frequencies, which may be programmable
into the CAP radio. Find out what frequencies the emergency responders
in your community use, and seek out radios that will allow you to
communicate with those agencies.

***Request portables*** -- One way to communicate with the customer or
other agencies is to request portable radios which have the frequencies
they use. These radios may have earpiece accessories that can fit into a
headset. This is the simplest way to establish communication with the
customer.

***Give customer CAP radio*** -- This is probably the least desirable
for both the customer and CAP.

***Slow Scan TV*** -- A picture is worth a thousand words. Establish
single frame video downlink (SFVD) capability with your county's
emergency management mobile operations vehicle (MOC) and EOC. This
equipment should be permanently installed in the county's MOC. SFVD is
probably the greatest service CAP can provide to an emergency manager, a
timely bird's-eye view of an incident.

***911 Dispatch*** -- If you want to respond like a volunteer fire
department, you should get dispatched like one. Your local 911 center
should have the pager numbers for essential personnel. Alphapagers
greatly enhance 911's ability to notify and brief your personnel on the
nature of the incident.

## **GET IN THE LOOP**

***Establish Relationships*** -- The emergency managers, fire chiefs and
law enforcement officials are all human. When an incident occurs they
call upon those they know they can depend upon. No matter how great of
service you could provide to an incident, if they have not seen or heard
from you lately, they are not likely to call upon you.

***Attend Emergency Mgt. Mtgs.*** -- Your area may have mutual aid or
emergency response meetings in which you can participate. Regular
attendance will keep CAP in the minds of emergency managers.

***Learn I/C System*** -- The incident command system is the standard
you must learn in order to properly participate in multi-agency
incidents.

***Scanners/Pagers*** -- Monitor emergency traffic in order to get a
heads up when CAP assets may be requested. Alert personnel by pagers
before the call goes out. This will improve response time.

***911 Dispatch*** - Your local 911 center can act as your contact,
provided you have provided them with a means to reach alert personnel
24/7 . It is important that the contact personnel be mission coordinator
trained, since go/no go decisions must be made in a short period of
time.

## **BE DEPENDABLE & PROFESSIONAL**

***Safety First*** -- Do not let the adrenaline play a part in the risk
management decisions.

***Know Limitations*** -- Educate emergency managers on weather,
visibility and crew limitations which may effect mission capabilities.

***Don't Overextend***

***Personnel*** -- Volunteer emergency responders must not put their
employment or family life in jeopardy. Be cognizant of overzealous
responders and watch for stress among personnel.

***Equipment -*** That's a Cessna, not a Black Hawk.

***CAP Regulations*** -- Crew rest, *posse comitatus*, flight release
procedures, and other CAP regulations must be considered prior to each
flight.

***Quality Assurance*** - Each mission will bring with it unique
learning experiences. Post mission review with outside agencies is
essential in maintaining safety and professionalism.

## **EXPAND TRAINING**

***Learn what customer knows*** -- Have your customers train your
personnel on what information they need in the field. Your personnel may
need to identify fire breaks, describe pipeline configurations, locate
ingress and egress for heavy equipment, or be able to identify a
particular processing unit for a chemical plant.

***Invite outside training sources*** -- National Weather Service, Red
Cross and your fire departments have specialized training in a variety
of topic which will aid your outreach to other agencies.

***Utilize FEMA & Red Cross Courses*** -- FEMA has a number of
correspondence courses which introduce the student to a number of topics
such as incident command system and response to natural disasters.

## **RECRUIT THE RIGHT PEOPLE**

***Customers' Personnel*** -- What a better way to stay in the loop and
learn what the customer knows than to recruit the customer's personnel.

***Government Employees*** -- When you need personnel Monday through
Friday, civil servants have the flexibility to answer the call.

***Professionals*** -- Doctors, lawyers, architects, etc., may have the
flexible schedules and contacts to make your emergency response plan
work.

***Engineers*** - Many of the survey work requested by outside agencies
is best accomplished by having an engineer on board. They also are great
hooking up the necessary gadgets such as single frame video downlink
gear.

***Communicators*** -- The aerial platform is useless if the personnel
in the plane cannot concisely describe what they see to the emergency
managers on the ground.

***Best way to Get a Job . . . Is to have a job***. If you do your job
well, you will likely be asked by other agencies to assist them. Be
smart, don't overextend your resources. You will find that additional
missions bring with them opportunities for new missions. The more flying
your squadron does, the more likely it will be in position when a plane
goes down or when an environmental disaster requires immediate
reconnaissance.

***CORE VALUES FOR CAP RAPID RESPONSE UNIT::** **DEPENDABILITY,
RESPONSIVENESS, QUALITY AND SAFETY**.*

EMAIL SUGGESTIONS, QUESTIONS, IDEAS TO <rockp@usunwired.net>