Well, thanks to the Board of Governors, one of the major problems in Civil Air Patrol is gone. Unfortunately, he left a lot of trainees who still do things his way, and the damage is still out there. In his rampage to power, the recently dismembered NC eliminated a lot of talent from the Emergency Services program. So, last Thursday night, There was an ELT mission in the vicinity of Sarasota. The Wing Alerting Officer was unable to find an Incident Commander to assume this mission. Not surprising, recalling the wholesale way that the Ayatolla went through the elimination of volunteers. But that is not my point. My point is, the damage is done, the program is sadly deficient, and it needs to be fixed. Are those in command fixing the problem? No, they are yelling at those of us who discussed the problem and possible solutions, because a news media picked up the deficiency and ran an article on it. I know at least three ICs who could run that mission in Sarasota and would be happy to do it, except that they have been excluded from membership for pointing out the National Commander's warts. I was told last night that I am endangering my path back into the organization by discussing the deficiency; by the way, I am one of the three. So those in charge had rather maintain the depletion of the pogrom than fix the problem. Secrecy is not going to fix the problem, recruiting, retention and training are.
Doug you couldn't have been more correct. The ES establishment in FLWG has been dismantled since August of 2004. The vast majority of that damage was done betwen Aug 04 and Aug 06.
I was an IC and Wing Alerting Officer when we took pride in the fact that the average time from page out from AFRCC to the time an Alerting Officer responded was less than 5 minutes. I hear its sometimes hours now.
Originally posted by RiverAux: got a link to this article?
It was in News of the Force on Thursday October 25 on page 1:
quote:
What if there was an emergency, and nobody came? The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) has a problem this morning in Florida. The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) alerted Florida Wing responders at 11:49 p.m., EDT, last night, that an emergency electronic locator transmitter (ELT) had been activated near the airport in Sarasota. ELT signals could be false alarms, or they could be coming from a downed aircraft with lives hanging in the balance. But as of 9 a.m., this morning -- some nine hours after the Air Force alerted the CAP to track the signal, no one from the CAP had responded to the emergency call.
Originally posted by RiverAux: Sorry, I thought you were talking about the real media.
The powers that be are treating it like the real media. Maybe that is because they remember that this was the entity that broke the story on "Testingate." But who printed the story is not important. What is important is trying to cover up the discrepancy like it doesn't exist by prohibiting discussion of it. It is never going to get fixed that way; and it needs fixing.
He didn't "break" anything. Skip was sitting in front of his computer one day illegally copying and redistributing copywrited news stories when an email came in which he then included in his "news".
But who printed the story is not important. What is important is trying to cover up the discrepancy like it doesn't exist by prohibiting discussion of it.
I know you are not obtuse, so you must be deliberately missing the point. Pineda tried years ago to have me removed from the Florida discussion group, and when he failed, he tried to cancel the group. His reason was that I was bringing up well documented instances of his abuse of power to the attention of the wing. This time, the Wing Alerting Officer asked for help, and in asking, revealed a well documented shortage of assets. Rather than try to fix the shortage, we get a directive to stop talking about it. That is SO Pineda. Not talking about it doesn't fix anything.
Originally posted by RiverAux: who prohibited discussion of this incident that may or may not have happened as "printed" by NOTF? Who is hiding that information?
That is the major problem with "management by rumor." I know who told me, but I don't know who issued the wing wide order, and I would really prefer not to identify who told me until I am certain that the vindictive element is gone. I can tell you that it was not the Alerting officer who originally sent out the request for help.
Believe me, the incident happened exactly as NOTF printed it. I personally received the request for help about six hours before Skip published his article.
That NOTF carried the information has nothing to do with the article being valid. I also got the information via email (from Florida Wing email list) that no IC was to be found for the mission. The email was from Wing staff member. It's odd considering the mission was in the home area of the former Wing Commander who was just relieved by SER Commander.
Was the email trying to find an IC or complaining about no one being available? Hard to believe that there wasn't one IC in FL willing to take an ELT mission.
Originally posted by RiverAux: Was the email trying to find an IC or complaining about no one being available? Hard to believe that there wasn't one IC in FL willing to take an ELT mission.
Both, actually. You have no idea how badly the Ayatollah has decimated the ES operation in Florida. For your information, there are two highly qualified ICs in the immediate vicinity, but they are both retired under duress. Tony didn't care what you did or how much you contributed, if you even mildly criticized him you were gone. After a while, with all the machinations going on, it was hard not to criticize him. Bringing back and requalifying the members that he separated would be a good first step, but the leadership is afraid to do it because of the atmosphere of retribution that still hangs over the wing like a pall.
According to the CAP homeland security resources page there are 32 incident commanders in Florida. It is not plausible that none of them wanted the mission and that instead there was some sort of breakdown in the alerting system itself.
Now, perhaps there wasn't an IC available in that group to take the mission (not unlikely), in which case some sort of backup system to get an IC from somewhere else needs to be developed.
Seems more like an issue of poor planning rather than something to be laid at the feet of someone that far removed from local ops.
Seems more like an issue of poor planning rather than something to be laid at the feet of someone that far removed from local ops.
And who, pray tell, do you propose to do the planning? The Wing is operating under an interim commander. There seems to be a certain amount of reluctance to leap into the breach given the vindictiveness that has been evidenced in the past. Meanwhile, you have access, why don't you get in touch with the 32 ICs and ask them why they didn't take the mission. Does your database show just bare numbers of assets, or does it show activity per asset? Some of them may be paper ICs.
I'm sure that there are probably a few of them who aren't actively used, but even then there should have been plenty. In my experience anyone who has gotten to IC is regularly going above and beyond the rest.
You've got a dozen or more ELT missions every month in Florida so I would have hoped that your mission activation system was working better.
Probably in the time we've been discussing this FL Wing has already handled half a dozen other ELT missions without any apparent problem.
But, unless you'd care to post the relevant portions of the email that you say you've seen, its hard for me to do more than guess at what the problem was here. Using the "simplest explanation is usually the right one" theory, it was probably just an unfortunate series of events.
Everything is not Pineda's fault even if some things are.
You are walking right on the line of calling me a liar. If I tell you I have seen an email, you can take it to the bank, I have seen an email. Right after I was non-renewed, we had an EPIRB in this area that went off intermittently for three weeks. I still had the numbers of the AFRCC, so I called them and asked what was going on. The answer was that Florida claimed not to have any assets in the area. So I went over and shut it down as a good samaritan. It was on a boat, on a charger, plugged into dock power. It would have gone on forever.
Send an email address to me skyray@skyray.com and I will forward you the email in confidence. I feel a little obligated not to flaunt what the wing ES people consider a mistake on a National Board. The alerting officer himself considers it people who qualify for the bling and don't respond when called.
No, I believe there was an email, but without seeing it I am at somewhat of a disadvantage in talking about the issues you say it raises.
quote:
The alerting officer himself considers it people who qualify for the bling and don't respond when called.
Not much bling associated with being an IC. Just a whole lot of sleepless nights. If there are people who are qualified but aren't taking their fair share of missions, then they need to have the quals yanked.
Now here's an interesting rumor. Some FLWG members in South Florida are trying to start a petition to get BG Hal DuPont to apply for the Wing CC vacancy. I have not seen the petition, but got emails from two different members 100 miles apart. Their arguement, General DuPont may be the only person that can fix the mess in the Wing.
