NORTH COAST, Calif. – California Office of Emergency Services staff participated in a training exercise with the California National Guard involving the helicopter support of the impact areas of a catastrophic earthquake near the north coast.
Using a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter, the emergency managers and disaster response personnel fly to landing zones in Redding, Arcata and Eureka.
“This exercise is all part of our continuing effort to keep all corners of California resilient during a large-scale disaster and leveraging our inter-agency agreements to help the local cities and counties,” said Ron Williams, branch manager of Logistics for Cal OES.
The overall mission and purpose of the training flight is to validate a portion of POD and staging area operations in accordance with the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) Response Plan; to familiarize logistics response staff and supporting agencies with local, county, state and federal staging area operations POD planning, operations, burn rates, sustainment and close out; the effects of a rotary wing aircraft in ad-hoc landing zones, and foster a unified disaster logistics force concept.
The CSZ Response Plan is led by Cal OES in conjunction with the needs of the local operational areas of the north coast, including Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino counties, as well as Oregon and Washington state.
“This is an essential exercise of our capabilities of our military and state assets to get into, positively affect and out of a catastrophically impacted area,” said Maj. Daniel Anderson.
Additionally, exercise participants were evaluated on tasks such as; conducting actual movement in the air corridor by flying a team of SMEs to local sites to achieve the mission, and conduct face to face interactive discussions with response personnel regarding; POD team, equipment management, establishing and sustaining an emergency supply chain, local resource capabilities and when and how to cease operation.
Participating agencies California National Guard, Cal Fire, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.