Helping the Civil Air Patrol after Hurricane Florence

The Assistant Public Affairs Officer of the Virginia Wing, Capt. Jacob Bixler, wrote a news release stating that "Hundreds of Civil Air Patrol members from three wings are making an impact this week on the lives of thousands of families visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Points of Distribution (PODs) for vital supplies in North Carolina. The CAP-trained POD teams are distributing MREs (meals ready to eat) and bottled water, in addition to other emergency supplies like ice and tarps, in storm-stricken communities in the Tar Heel State. About 80 members of the North Carolina Wing, including cadets as young as 15, are working at the POD sites this week. They have been joined by 120 CAP members from the Virginia Wing and another 30 from the Maryland Wing.

I was honored to serve for two days as CAP's coordinator for news releases being written by the Wing public affairs officers from North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia. This meant that I worked with these PAOs to craft news releases that were written, approved by CAP's national headquarters, and distributed to the media. Many media outlets used the news releases!

And I received a shout out from CAP's Middle East Region COmmander, Col. John Knowles, who wrote in his monthly Commander's Commentary:

"Our public information officers have done a great job getting our story out to the public about what we are doing serving our communities.  Maj. Julie Holley worked with a number of wing PIOs and was supplemented by Lt. Col. Steven Solomon, one of CAP’s national public affairs staff.  Social media is the pulse of any event and our mission, wing and region PA folks made sure the world knew what we were doing."

SC Civil Air Patrol volunteers helping with Florence recovery