BATON ROUGE - Members of the Louisiana Wing Civil Air Patrol (CAP) took to the sky Saturday for a joint exercise to start preparing for hurricane season. 

Pilots worked out of Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport and the Alexandria International Airport for their trainings to make sure they know what to do when disaster strikes.

"The scenario is if we have any kind of damage from a hurricane and the aircraft are being deployed to different parts around the Baton Rouge area to look for either downed aircraft or damage from a hurricane," Lt. Col Chris Sturm said.

Seven single-engine CAP aircraft went up with aerial photographers and mission observers to gather images of various locations across Louisiana. Officials came together to make sure the Louisiana wing is on track to successfully help out during emergency situations. 

"We need to know what Civil Air Patrol does, what their capabilities are, what they can offer to GOHSEP, you know, usually during some kind of natural disaster, like a hurricane," State Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer Army Col. Matthew Peterson said.

Pilots flew over various areas, collecting information for emergency decision-makers. Col. Peterson says the fly-overs are necessary in order to stay prepared for future disasters. 

"Pictures get uploaded into a big computer system, and then the governor's office is able to look at them and the agent general then is able to make multi-million dollar decisions based on that surveillance that we know where to send the help," Peterson said.

Civil Air Patrol cadets were also there training. 

"I'm training them to be flight line marshallers so that if a hurricane happens we have operations with multiple aircraft, then they can do the job of a flight line marshaller allowing senior members to go do some other job," Sturm said.

As hurricane season begins in Louisiana, residents can be prepared by having a plan to evacuate early, keeping basic necessities on hand and being informed of updates from the Gulf Coast.