A South Dakota Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182. Photo from the S.D. CAP.
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KELO.com) South Dakota Wing of Civil Air Patrol will conduct dual East and West River training exercises Saturday (March 13) to practice skills used in search and rescue and disaster relief missions. The exercise mission bases will be in Sioux Falls and Custer.
“We saw several missing-person searches we assisted with at the end of 2020,” said Col. Nick Gengler, South Dakota Wing commander. “These training missions help hone our skills in the same terrain we would search in a real mission.”
Black Hills aircraft sorties during the training will help CAP pilots refresh their mountain flying ability, which is demanding due to the thinner air at the higher altitude, particularly when flying low to perform visual searching for missing persons in the valleys below. The exercise is also expected to include ground team training and unmanned aerial search drones.
There are still frustrations with the slow pace of immunizations.
Liz Healy, infection control specialist with Avera Sacred Heart Hospital in Yankton, says the state Department of Health is working to even out the distribution.
Healy says it’s difficult to plan for any type of vaccination clinic.
She says they are in frequent contact with the Health Department.
Over 69,000 residents have received over 77,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine.
(Jerry Oster, WNAX, contributed this report.) (Todd Epp, KELO.com News, also contributed to this report.)