In the wake of historic rains and flooding that walloped a portion of the nation’s heartland late last month, Civil Air Patrol members took to the skies in a massive relief effort that also included online examination from afar of the devastation.
The massive flooding affected half of Iowa and transformed sections of quiet streams into raging waters. Rising floodwaters covered all but the roofs of homes, drowned farmlands, and damaged hundreds of businesses in portions of Iowa, South Dakota, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.
The rainfall transformed areas that in times of drought are like small dustbowls, and waterways normally more like streams than rivers.
“In places, the Big Sioux River, which is a gentle, meandering prairie stream, was miles wide as it headed toward the Missouri River, inundating farmland as well as communities such as McCook Lake and Canton,” said Lt. Col. Todd Epp, South Dakota Wing chief of staff.
The Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota wings, as well as members from the Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and National Capital wings, participated in the effort. The multiwing involvement ranged from on-site response to drone photography and online support for geospatial damage assessments.
CAP flew 25 sorties totaling 55 hours of flight time in Iowa, providing 2,000-3,000 images of the devastation to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for damage assessment.
The Iowa and Minnesota wings provided five aircraft and crews, while the Minnesota and South Dakota wings provided two aerial photographers each. The Tennessee Wing sent an aircraft equipped with a multispectral aerial imaging system and a crew to operate it.
“The overall response has been fantastic,” said Col. Sean McClanahan, Iowa Wing commander.
In three of the hardest-hit states — Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota — CAP’s geospatial program completed 4,157 damage assessments. Some 3,480 structures were affected to varying degrees from minor damage to destroyed.
The majority — 2,916 — were affected in Iowa, along with 413 in Minnesota and 151 in South Dakota. CAP’s geospatial personnel accounted for nearly 90 hours of volunteer assistance in those states.
CAP was expected to complete operations Sunday. President Joe Biden has issued a federal disaster declaration in the three states.
Col. Michael Marek, South Dakota Wing commander, and other wing members wing flew some 17 hours and in tandem with the Iowa Wing, gathering images of the damage along the Big Sioux, James, and Vermillion rivers. The South Dakota images were provided to the state’s Office of Emergency Management.
“While the South Dakota Wing is small in numbers, most wing members know someone directly impacted by the flooding,” Marek said. “The CAP involvement in South Dakota underscores its volunteer heritage.
“On this mission, new as well as veteran members participated, including retired military, a doctor, lawyer, teacher, student, businessperson, journalist, and IT professional, as well as cadets,” he said.
According to Epp, the mission is the South Dakota Wing’s largest since 2011, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to conduct record releases from dams along the Missouri River, causing summer-long flooding.
CAP’s effort is another example of how the nature of its missions has changed.
“In my early years in CAP, almost all of our actual missions were for missing aircraft,” Epp said. “Today, service to local, state, and tribal government is a vital mission in South Dakota, sometimes requested by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center or other federal agencies and sometimes by state and local levels of government.”
Marek praised the mission volunteers for their “selfless” and “can-do” efforts.
“CAP is about service, whether that be serving through operational missions like flood damage and missing persons missions or helping develop the next generation of leaders and aerospace/STEM professionals through our cadet youth program,” he said.
Marek went on to say Civil Air Patrol members are ready daily to serve. “Major missions like this reaffirm that our daily efforts in CAP make a real-world difference,” he said.
The damage ranged from flooded basements to destroyed homes, businesses, and public buildings, affecting families who lived so far from the rivers they thought they were safe from flooding but lost everything.
Neither Marek nor McClanahan witnessed the impact firsthand, but the images made an impression.
McClanahan called the images “heartbreaking.”
“Water flowing where we, as humans, have tried to keep dry ground creates problems that can be devastating and long-lasting,” he said. “It’s one thing to look at these images and wonder at how much water it takes to create the amount of flooding that is captured in the pictures.
“But to consider the human toll that goes along with that — the lost property, the loss of income to the farmers and businesses, the infrastructure that now must be unexpectedly replaced — sometimes it escapes description.”_____Paul SouthContributing Writer
