The Civil Air Patrol has been tapped to participate in a major homeland security and disaster response exercise starting on May 16 that will test emergency responders’ ability to handle a massive earthquake in America’s heartland along the seismic-sensitive New Madrid fault.
“CAP is a nationwide organization with a tremendous amount of resources it can provide to the nation in a disaster, no matter how large,” said Col. James Rushing, CAP’s Southeast Region commander, who is the senior agency liaison for this year’s four-day exercise called Ardent Sentry. He performed a similar job during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
