The Iowa Wing of the Civil Air Patrol is holding training exercises this weekend in Ames. Major Doug Jansen says the training focuses on a couple of areas. He says they’ll be out looking for some simulated missing aircraft and they’ll also be learning how to look at buildings and bridges that may have been damaged by a natural disaster or a terrorist incident. Jansen says they’ll be using some new technology when it comes to damage assessment. He says they have some aerial imaging equipment that allows them to take images of buildings or bridges from one-thousand feet up, and then they can beam them back to a command post so decision makers can get live footage of what’s occurring on the ground. Jansen says the Iowa Civil Air Patrol has around 450 members. He says they usually go out once or twice a month across the state to look for missing aircraft or to respond to disasters. Jansen says the Civil Air Patrol is the auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force and conducts 95-percent of the inland search and rescue missions in the U.S.
