Pilots with California Disaster Airlift Response Teams are preparing for a simulated emergency response exercise — practice for critical flights to people and supplies around disasters such as flooding, wildfire or earthquake in April.
The organization, also known as CalDART, holds this type of training exercise once every two years. According to a media release, CalDART volunteer pilots from local airports throughout the state will deliver a virtual shipment of disaster supplies to participating disaster response personnel on April 26.
John Zekanoski, who leads the DART members at San Martin Airport, said in an email statement that the exercise helps pilots and ground crews hone their skills and teamwork in case they need to respond to a major activation for a disaster such as a major wildfire or earthquake.
“Most emergency professionals in the state do not have much if any experience in utilizing aviation — they have a lot of tools in their disaster response toolkit, but not much in the way of utilizing pilots, aircraft, and their ground teams to strengthen response effectiveness,” Zekanoski said. “So, not only are we giving our pilots and ground teams a chance to polish their skills, but we are giving emergency management professionals a chance to see our organization in operation and be better prepared to utilize us and aviation in general in their next disaster response.”
There are 13 active CalDART chapters, said Bob Goodwyn, president of the CalDART chapter at Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose. They span several airports throughout the Bay Area, including San Martin, Livermore, Palo Alto and in Contra Costa County. Zekanoski said local DART chapters also hold their own disaster preparedness exercises every one to two years; CalDART pilots based at San Jose’s Reid-Hillview Airport will hold their own training on March 8.
Goodwyn said that the exercise in April would be on a larger scale, where the organization as a whole will mobilize airplanes and send them on simulated missions to deliver goods, evacuate people and assess damage. The main focus of the exercise is to make sure pilots can supply necessities to people whose communities are cut off by a disaster.
“In addition to the jobs and commerce, it’s a disaster relief function. If we have a disaster, it can knock out surface transportation; it doesn’t take much for a bridge to be declared unsafe and that can disable an entire freeway,” Goodwyn said. “So if there are communities cut off but they have a smaller airport, we can use smaller airplanes to get people and material back and forth between those airports.”
The exercise allows volunteers to strengthen their relationships with each other and other disaster responders, like police, firefighters and emergency management within cities and counties, and other volunteer organizations that become active during disasters. The April event will allow them to talk with other responders at the airport about potential scenarios and problems to overcome, and visualize how they can contribute to disaster response.
“The DARTS can help in any disaster, and offer the greatest utility when surface transportation is compromised on a local or regional basis,” Zekanoski said.
Goodwyn said that they are expecting around 10 of the chapters to participate, but they are hoping to get all chapters involved.
Participating in the exercise gives pilots the opportunity to take on assignments that resemble their standards flight training, which is needed to earn and maintain their flight privileges with the Federal Aviation Administration. The assignments will involve them meeting a person or cargo at a specific time and place at an airport, flying to another airport with the goods and dropping them off at a specific place at the receiving airport, Zekanoski said.
To prepare, CalDART will have to verify pilots’ credentials and the kinds of loads their aircraft can be assigned. based on information the organization already collected. The pilots then receive their assignments by the flight operations teams, who may brief them on their mobilization.
Goodwyn said the Reid Hillview DART chapter will be upgrading their communications systems to satellite-based internet systems, allowing them to communicate with other similarly equipped airports if communications are knocked down during the disaster. They initially were using ham radio repeaters, but previous drills proved that it “wasn’t quite accurate,” he said. He said that the DART chapters in San Martin and Santa Monica have satellite-based internet systems to help coordinate the flights.
“The best way to prepare for a drill is to have a drill,” Goodwyn said.