That is the first thing that agencies try to assess after a disaster hits, whether it is damage assessment of a tornado, flooding, fires, volcanoes or ice.  Damage assessments allow emergency responders to develop a full picture and the areas that were hit the worst. 

Technology for assessing this damage has evolved over the years. From film to high-resolution digital aerial photos to drones, there are a multitude of ways to get imagery of damaged areas. For the volunteers of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), that is their entire mission if they are tasked by state emergency management. 

“With aerial photography, we have some very sophisticated tools that we use that provide latitude and longitude encoded in the digital data that we provide to the to the emergency response agencies,” said Civil Air Patrol Lt. Col. David McCollum, director of emergency services for the Oklahoma CAP wing.

State and local agencies were the typical partners for those CAP missions, but now federal agencies are using them more regularly. Even when preparing for a disaster to hit, CAP is one of the first calls when working through the disaster support framework, said Lt. Col. John Desmarais, director of operations for the Civil Air Patrol.

An Air Force auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol is made up of civilian volunteers who perform emergency services like search and rescue missions, organs and human tissue transport, and aerial damage assessment photography. After 9/11, a Civil Air Patrol airplane was the only nonmilitary aircraft allowed to fly. It provided high-resolution pictures of the World Trade Center site and began doing more imaging like this with federal funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Civil Air Patrol volunteers have responded to many disasters around the U.S., including the 2013 Moore tornado in Oklahoma, the 2018 Kīlauea volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, and flooding along the Arkansas River earlier this year. They conduct around 75 disaster missions a year across the country, said Desmarais.

“We’ll use local airplanes and crews to go up and take some of that initial damage assessment photos to identify where problems are,” he said. 

He said these photos help first responders understand where roads and bridges might be out so they can plan response routes faster. They also provide their imagery to state agencies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to identify people who live in areas that will need assistance. 

McCollum cut a beach vacation short this year to help gather imagery for the Oklahoma Office of Emergency Management. In May 2019, all of Oklahoma’s 77 counties were placed under a state of emergency due to flooding, and CAP documented any infrastructure that was impacted by floodwaters. He said he flew missions three to four times a day every day for about two weeks. Overall, the Oklahoma CAP wing provided around 100,000 aerial images per day during the flooding. 

“We’re very highly trained, we’re very highly motivated,” said McCollum. “Oklahoma is an incredibly rural state. But when something happens … you’ve never seen people come together and give you the shirt off their back like the people in this state will.
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The biggest events they have supported in the past include the 2017 hurricane season, helping with Harvey in Houston, Maria is Puerto Rico and Irma in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Civil Air Patrol is still operating in Puerto Rico, taking photos of the electrical power grid with sensory systems that are able to create high-resolution 3D images for groups to be able to see the progress in restoring power.

Civil Air Patrol has a national emergency service academy every summer that runs between 500-600 participants each year. Additionally, they try to provide training CAP at a local levels to make it easier for volunteers. 

Members of CAP will fly in aircraft and do damage assessment, or other related missions like flying routes to identify firelines for agencies to use for real-time planning when trying to assign firefighters. Using CAP for these missions is much less expensive and more locally available than federal resources. For Houston operations after Hurricane Harvey, the support CAP provided cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, but federal agencies estimated it would have been between $18-$20 million to use urban contractors or federal resources, Desmarais said. 

“I think they see the value of what they’re doing hands-on in the field,” Desmarais said of the volunteer forces that make up CAP. “I think they see the benefit because they know that they’re helping their neighbors.”

Brigette Waltermire

Brigette Waltermire is a recent graduate of the University of Oklahoma, earning a bachelor of arts in online journalism in 2017 and a master of arts in journalism in 2018. She interned at the Enid News & Eagle in 2017 and was the executive producer for OU [UNFILTERED], a student media project with KWTV News 9. She managed over 100 student journalists during the 2018 Oklahoma teacher walkout. Waltermire was on faculty for the 2019 National Press Photographers Association News Video Workshop in Norman. She has been a public affairs specialist with the Oklahoma Air National Guard for six years, contributing to the award-winning Air Observer, the biannual journal of the 137th Special Operations Wing. See her work here.

www.bwaltermire.com

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They gathered around a cooler on a makeshift bench beside the front door and wiped their brows as they took a mini-break from their day of labor – a change from their usual school routine.

Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, the teenagers traveled to Texas to volunteer alongside their church group to rebuild homes that were destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

After a long process of researching communities and contacting organizations, the young volunteers from Macalester Plymouth United Church decided to spend their time working with Houston Responds, a voluntary group that unites church coalitions to support community recovery efforts.

The team behind Houston Responds launched a campaign called “Far From Finished” with the aim of reminding the public that a post-disaster crisis still remains in Houston, almost two years after the devastating storm ripped through communities. 

According to Gov. Greg Abbott’s Commission to Rebuild Texas, over $539 million has been spent on housing and other disaster expenses in Houston as of January 2019  – but many people are still displaced or living in unrepaired homes.

The home the children were rebuilding, belonging to 74-year-old Leola Davis, was one of many in need of repair in Independence Heights, a historically black community in Houston. Over the space of one weekend, two different volunteer groups stepped into the flood-wrecked home.

Colleen Henneke, a Houston Responds volunteer from the Bayou City Fellowship, continues to evaluate homes in the neighborhood for flood damage. She said that while the destructive storm caused major damage to the area, the response and recovery efforts have brought communities together.

Henneke said that some of the houses were in bad conditions before Harvey came, which was one of the reasons there was not a lot of help in the area. She explained that some of the local churches are not well-resourced and don’t have a lot of general extra funds. 

“It really takes the bigger churches to love on an area like this to get the rebuilds done,” Henneke said.

“I believe that God allowed this storm to happen at a time when this city needed to come together and churches needed to come together.”

Other residents spoke about an increased faith in God during the recovery period, something Henneke noticed as a church volunteer.

A 2015 study from the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen found that many individuals turn to religion after disasters “to deal with unbearable and unpredictable life events”.

The predominantly white volunteer leaders said their initial efforts required building trust with the Independence Heights community. Two years later, the evidence it worked was the praise local residents had for the volunteers.

“To build trust, we just kept showing up,” Henneke said. “These are our neighbors. We’ve got lots of people who can go on missions, but you can go on mission in your backyard if you live in Houston.” 

The Minnesota highschool teenagers were one of many out-of-state groups that are still coming to Houston to help rebuild hurricane-stricken homes. Despite the change of climate and strenuous work, the teenagers said they’re passionate about the work they’re doing. 

“It’s dirty, and it’s hard work, but it needs to be done,” 15-year-old Annie Delma said.

“Before we came here, we watched a video that the organization we’re with showed us and it was actually of the person who owns this home. Just hearing the stories, our group is a very connecting group, and so we really empathize with these people.”

Annie added that while they may be young, they believe they can make a difference this summer by helping the struggling homeowners.

“It’s been two years after Harvey and we came to this house and it was completely gutted,” Annie said. “This woman was not able to live in her house anymore. I can’t imagine not being able to live in my house.”

One of their leaders for the trip, Michael Eugene Florey, described how doing the physical work and seeing the damage was a learning curve for the schoolchildren.

“It shows them how much they can do,” Florey said.” For a lot of the smaller kids, waking up in the morning saying ‘I can run a staple gun or a drywall drill,’ they can just expand their imagination of what they can do and accomplish, it’s fantastic.”

Florey said the kids want to be of service, they want to help. 

He added that “it’s been great to come down and see it first-hand, to see how great the need is, and how resilient the people who are still living here are.”

Rachel Farrell

Rachel Farrell is a graduate of Dublin City University in Ireland. Farrell works as a news reporter for Independent.ie, Ireland’s largest breaking news website. She covered major events such as the pope’s visit to Dublin in 2018, the referendum on abortion and Brexit. She is a regular style and entertainment contributor and broke national news stories for the Irish Independent and The Herald newspapers. Examples of her work can be found here.

independent.ie/opinion/independent-journalists/rachel-farrell/

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