CAP Emergency Services

Supporting Our Communities in Times of Need

While CAP has long been associated with search and rescue missions, its work also includes disaster relief and communications, as well as counter and homeland security missions.

On average, each year CAP members fly more than 100,000 hours in operational missions and save over 100 lives. CAP provides air and ground support for disaster relief, flying officials to remote locations, transporting of live tissue to critical care sites and performing aerial damage assessment.

CAP has one of the largest unified communications networks in the country, available 24/7.

CAP assists the U.S. Customs Service, Enforcement Administration and Forest Service in their counterdrug efforts. In 2005, CAP aircrews flew more than 12,000 hours in support of the nation's war on drugs and were credited with contributing to the confiscation of more than $400 million of illegal narcotics.

CAP aircraft fly non-combat homeland security missions such as surveillance of critical infrastructures, airborne communications relay, and airlift of critical cargo. These missions are flown under the authority of the U.S. Northern Command, the joint command responsible for the continental United States. CAP receives tasking from the air component of Northern Command, 1st Air Force, with its headquarters at Tyndall AFB, Fla.

CAP provides extensive support to the nation's communities following natural disasters. During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, CAP serviced dozens of locations across the region – more than 1,500 CAP members volunteered to provide support ranging from aircraft missions such as search and rescue, transportation of critical personnel and supplies, and aerial imagery of flood damaged areas for civil authorities to ground team missions such as house to house searching of neighborhoods and passing out emergency supplies. In total, the CAP flew nearly 1,000 aircraft missions in support of the hurricane relief efforts.