Recent heavy rains have left Wisconsin rivers and lakes swollen and in many cases the surrounding areas flooded. With disaster relief efforts ongoing, Airmen from the 115th Fighter Wing in Madison worked with Airmen from the Mississippi Air National Guard's 186th Air Refueling Wing in Meridian, Miss., to bring an RC-26 capable of flying over a flooded area and send back live video and still pictures.

Along with technological assistance from the Arkansas Air National Guard's 314th Airlift Wing in Little Rock, Ark., the mission flew to more than 25 different locations across the state to provide on-the-spot assessments of the flood situation.

The specific mission was born from a similar mission Wisconsin Air Guard members undertook during Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. The Wisconsin Task Force Katrina also used an RC-26 to take photos of the bridges, highways and associated infrastructure in New Orleans.

The Katrina mission required the RC-26 crew to land the plane to process the photos. The current mission in Wisconsin takes advantage of what's called a "Katrina Mod" which allows for instantaneous transmission of images and video without landing.

The testing phase of the modification was used in 2007 during the California and Florida wildfires. The mission in Wisconsin is the first, full-scale disaster assistance use of this technology.

Dubbed "incident awareness assessment," by aircrews, it is specifically designed to help coordinate on-the-ground relief efforts by providing real-time assessments of flooded areas. The imagery is sent to an antenna array that is temporarily set up on top of a building where officials coordinating the efforts can view the transmissions.

The Wisconsin Joint Operations Center and the Wisconsin Emergency Operations Center, located within the Wisconsin National Guard Headquarters, take these instant images and video and combine them with other information to coordinate the relief and recovery efforts.

"With any emergency response and recovery, it is all about accurate information," said Brig. Gen. Don Dunbar, adjutant general of the Wisconsin Air National Guard.

"With this type of aircraft able to stream live video to the governor holding a cabinet meeting or a county official meeting with first responders, they can see first hand exactly what's going on and figure out how to deploy their assets in the best way possible."

Wisconsin's National Guard is organized under a joint task force where disaster relief support is a combination of support from the Air and Army Guard units that are best used to suit the needs to the response.

In this case, the Air Guard side was used to fly the mission and the collection of the images and video was done by both Army and Air Guard personnel working along side Wisconsin emergency management officials.

The RC-26 mission includes drug interdiction support for local and state law enforcement agencies. Wisconsin is one of 11 states that are home to an RC-26 and supports many of its neighboring states including Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The counter drug mission combines the assets of both the Army and Air Guard and provides the operational preparation the crews need to do disaster relief missions, said Lt. Col. Stephen Dunai, 115th Operations Group and RC-26 program manager.

"The communications and the relationships we have built up over the years doing the counter drug missions in Wisconsin apply directly to emergency response situations," Colonel Dunai said. "This greatly enhances our ability to provide support whenever called upon."

While it is not unusual for helicopters to be used by officials for assessing damage over a particular area, the RC-26 offers some other advantages when there is widespread damage.

"The RC-26 is a fixed-wing aircraft which can get to the scene fairly quickly and can easily be redirected to other sites that officials would like to see," said Lt. Col. Dave Romuald, 115th Operations Group commander.

The Katrina and wildfire missions allowed the units who fly the RC-26s to tweak the systems to allow for the greatest ability to transmit live video, particularly when working with crews on the ground receiving the feed and transmitting it to officials who need it.

"The use of live video is new to our mission," said Lt. Col. Rick Berryhill, 186th Air Refueling Wing from the Mississippi Air National Guard. "The active duty has been using this capability for a while to support the war on terrorism and we are using some of the same concepts they use overseas."

Unfortunately, the bad weather in Wisconsin has generated a need to provide as much data to the emergency responders as possible, General Dunbar said, providing that data to those who can use it to help people is the primary goal of the mission.

"It is not about the particular cause of the event, whether it is mother nature or a terrorist threat; it is about all hazards response and this capability for homeland defense is irreplaceable," General Dunbar said.

related report
Air Guard plane provides documentation of flood damage
Indianapolis - Indiana National Guard officials here have received live footage of flood damage throughout the state from an advanced Air National Guard counterdrug aircraft. The footage will assist with missions and help local governments plan to repair the damage.

"It can show officials where roads are washed out and what damage there is to infrastructure," said Maj. Mark Jeffries, the missions systems officer for the West Virginia Air National Guard's 130th Airlift Wing based in Charleston.

The RC-26 is one of 11 surveillance planes operated by the Air National Guard. While originally designated for counterdrug work, it has since been used for other domestic duties such as support for natural disasters. Its advanced visual capabilities are superior to typical footage captured with cameras.

"The RC-26B is equipped with an infrared camera which can pick up any leakage from a power plant, for example," Major Jeffries said. "We can also get nice prints from the still cameras."

Still photos of damage can be helpful during planning stages, allowing users to write on photos if necessary and also show the damage from a bird's-eye view with a wider angle. Video footage is shot at a different angle. The RC-26 can also stay in the air at least twice as long as a helicopter.

This response is not just a one-time, one-state focused effort, said Lt. Col. Mike Shiels, the branch chief for counterdrug aviation at the National Guard Bureau.

"It is part of an overall national response framework that the NGB has spent countless man hours developing with all 54 states and territories," he said. "It is by no means perfect, and we have numerous improvements to be made. We learn more and get better at it each time we employ this capability."

An RC-26 from the Mississippi Air National Guard's 186th Air Refueling Wing in Meridian arrived in Wisconsin on June 11 to fly over dozens of affected areas in the state and provide live, broadcast-quality video of problem areas.

The capability, which allows engineers on the ground to begin the planning process for reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, was employed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, tested during last year's California wildfires, and is operational for the first time in these flooded states.

The Mississippi aircraft was made available as a substitute for Wisconsin's own RC-26 from the Wisconsin Air National Guard's 115th Fighter Wing in Madison which is currently deployed in support the war on terrorism.

related report
Air, Army National Guard battle floods in Iowa
Des Moines - More than 2,500 Air and Army National Guardsmen are teaming with agencies from across the state to battle what has been called the 500-year flood in Central and South Iowa in mid June.

More than 1,000 guardsmen are expected to arrive in areas from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City June 15 to augment the existing team as flood waters are heading south.

Senior Master Sgt. Angie Vos, who works full time as human resource specialist with the Iowa Air National Guard, is one of a handful of augmentees at the Emergency Operations Center in the basement level of the Iowa National Guard headquarters at Camp Dodge in Johnston, Iowa.

The EOC here sits more than 100 coordinators gathered from agencies ranging from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Iowa Highway Patrol arranged in a descending semicircle, facing three massive screens streaming news and data.

"Our mission is to provide as much assistance as fast as possible," Sergeant Vos said. "This is a massive operation."

Sergeant Vos is one of a few who coordinates efforts for the entire National Guard effort in Iowa, which assists in nearly every facet of the statewide operations from filling and placing sandbags in areas expected to flood, to assisting in evacuation efforts and teaming with the Iowa Highway Patrol to provide security for already evacuated towns.

The guardsmen have been crucial in performing their mission, said Capt. Mike Winter of the Iowa State Patrol.

"As the highway patrol, we're pretty much the 'first responders' but we just don't have the manpower to sustain without the (National) Guard's help," he said. "They have played a major role in our operations here."

The captain said he has coordinated to have two guardsmen to accompany each patrolman in Cedar Rapids June 15 to assist with check points and patrols as flood waters have reached 7 feet above flood levels June 14 and are beginning to recede.

Air and Army National Guard members will move ahead of and follow the flood waters as it moves south and inundates many of the communities that lay in its devastating path, Sergeant Vos said.

"We're here to do everything we can for the state of Iowa and its residents," the sergeant said. "This is home for many of us."

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