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North Central West Virginia Airport News:
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US Air Force Evaluates West Virginia Civil Air Patrol
Sunday, May 20, 2007
WBOY TV, West Virginia Media
BRIDGEPORT -- Commercial service has returned to the North Central West Virginia Airport, but another service never left.
The West Virginia Wing of the Civil Air Patrol flies out of Harrison-Marion as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force, activated during emergencies.
"They don't get the recognition that they really should get," said Lt. Col. Lewis Strough, commander of the Middle East (United States) Liaision Region of the Civil Air Patrol-U.S. Air Force. "It's really tremendous working with these folks."
Strough was one of the Air Force officials evaluating the West Virginia Wing Saturday in its bi-annual certification.
The Wing is an all-volunteer force of nearly 680 members and seven planes. Saturday, it completed exercises including search and rescue and locating a downed plane, and also took some pictures of infrastructure in case of damage due to severe weather like flooding.
Strough said the Wing performed well in the search and rescue exercises.
Nationally, the Civil Air Patrol has worked on some of the biggest disasters, including Sept. 11, 2001, the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion, and Hurricane Katrina.
The West Virginia Wing volunteers flew last month when a glider crashed in Pendleton County.
"He had just taken off in a glider in Pennsylvania and was just doing some flying around, and got caught in a bad storm, and went down in our area," said Major Jeff Schrock, public affairs officer for the West Virginia Wing. "We found him, and he was alive and walked away from it."
The Civil Air Patrol performs 95 percent of inland search and rescue missions in the United States. It has almost 62,000 members nationwide.
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