Great story in the Lubbock AJ
http://lubbockonline.com/opinion/op.../jay-leeson-west-texas-air-force-heads-harvey
When the first call came, Dustin Johnson was taken aback by the desperation on the other end of the line. An anguished Houston area code described the hell surrounding them.
It was the first of a dozen such calls he received last Monday. Each one similar — “the waters are deep … my children … please bring your helicopter.”
“I think stranded people just started to Google ‘helicopters Texas’ and they came across Dustin’s cell phone number,” Johnson’s wife Olivia told me. “Knowing him, he imagined Sidney on the other end of everyone of those calls,” she said, referencing their 18-month-old daughter.
Johnson, 30, owns and operates Cedar Ridge Aviation, based out of his native Knox City, halfway between Abilene and the Red River. His helicopter service provides everything from hog hunts and crop spraying to running cattle on the region’s expansive ranches.
After the first call, Johnson knew he was going. The only question was when to depart. He was in Dallas, picking up a helicopter repaired after a nine-week stint spraying corn in Iowa and Missouri.
After the second call, then the third, he called Olivia.
Friends dissuaded him from leaving Monday, three days after Hurricane Harvey had made landfall. Even as a tropical storm, Harvey posed anything but ideal flight conditions.
Frustrated, he called two employees, Roy Brosig and Rocky Smith. Brosig, a pilot who’d just returned from Iowa days earlier, simply replied: “My bags are already packed.” Smith responded, “If I can’t ride with you, I’ll get a boat.” The next call was to his business partner Garrett Durrett, who promptly ended his vacation in Horseshoe Bay.
Johnson then made a Facebook post requesting other helicopter pilots to join him. A quick reply came from Gideon Carmichael, owner of Carmichael Helicopter Service, Johnson’s competitor half an hour away in Haskell. Carmichael would fly his own chopper.
Back home, Johnson spent Tuesday making calls. Eventually the team was given its first mission: arrive in Fort Worth Wednesday morning, pick up 10 boxes of blood and deliver the cargo to a Red Cross staging area in Houston.
What would soon be dubbed “The West Texas Air Force” — a group initially composed of a partner, a competitor and two employees on an unpaid disaster-relief vacation with their boss, equipped with three helicopters, as well two of Johnson’s 1,500-gallon fuel trucks filled at no cost by Avfuel in Abilene — headed into Harvey.
By Wednesday at dusk, the first mission, which also distributed 2,000 hot meals to Red Cross facilities, was complete.
But later that evening, a Facebook post by Cuatro Strack was brought to their attention. It read:
“We need as many helicopters down in Wharton County, first light Airport KARM. Aviation fuel on hand.”
Before dawn on Thursday, the choppers headed southwest to Wharton.
They arrived to muddy waters covering farm and ranch land as far as they could see. Single-story homes, fence lines, trucks, tractors and trailers were submerged.
Johnson’s experience in aerial assistance with automobile accidents, fires and missing child searches has taught him “nothing is more critical than time.”
So, upon landing, when it became clear local officials had no organized plan, the team quickly departed, conducting their own search and rescue for people within a 40-mile radius. Soon U.S. Coast Guardsmen arrived and were pointed to homes with signals of distress — white sheets and mattresses upon, and ladders extended to, rooftops.
Then the team, joined by five more responding choppers, shifted focus to moving cattle and horses to higher ground — a task for which West Texas helicopter pilots were well prepared.
For the duration of Thursday, they pushed cattle throughout the area. Johnson, Carmichael and Bosig, demonstrating the skill of maneuvering aircraft on water that doesn’t provide the rotor lift of solid ground, frequently lowered Smith and Durrett down to surface level. The men would hop from the skids and swim to cut fencing through which cattle and horses could escape.
“On a scale of bad things I’ve ever seen, the flooding was 100. Anything previous was a 10,” Johnson told me. Brosig could only describe what he saw as “outrageous” after witnessing animals’ noses, then ears, vanish below the surface. “I’ll never forget the water or the animals,” he said.
The team estimates they moved some 2,400 head of cattle and 100 horses on Thursday.
They flew to Beaumont on Friday morning where they delivered doctors and equipment. Then they moved more animals.
I asked Johnson why he’s taken up this endeavor. His reply: “We have the equipment, the ability, and we know what we’re doing. We had no excuse.”
And that, more than anything, puts the “West Texas” in The West Texas Air Force.
http://lubbockonline.com/opinion/op.../jay-leeson-west-texas-air-force-heads-harvey
When the first call came, Dustin Johnson was taken aback by the desperation on the other end of the line. An anguished Houston area code described the hell surrounding them.
It was the first of a dozen such calls he received last Monday. Each one similar — “the waters are deep … my children … please bring your helicopter.”
“I think stranded people just started to Google ‘helicopters Texas’ and they came across Dustin’s cell phone number,” Johnson’s wife Olivia told me. “Knowing him, he imagined Sidney on the other end of everyone of those calls,” she said, referencing their 18-month-old daughter.
Johnson, 30, owns and operates Cedar Ridge Aviation, based out of his native Knox City, halfway between Abilene and the Red River. His helicopter service provides everything from hog hunts and crop spraying to running cattle on the region’s expansive ranches.
After the first call, Johnson knew he was going. The only question was when to depart. He was in Dallas, picking up a helicopter repaired after a nine-week stint spraying corn in Iowa and Missouri.
After the second call, then the third, he called Olivia.
Friends dissuaded him from leaving Monday, three days after Hurricane Harvey had made landfall. Even as a tropical storm, Harvey posed anything but ideal flight conditions.
Frustrated, he called two employees, Roy Brosig and Rocky Smith. Brosig, a pilot who’d just returned from Iowa days earlier, simply replied: “My bags are already packed.” Smith responded, “If I can’t ride with you, I’ll get a boat.” The next call was to his business partner Garrett Durrett, who promptly ended his vacation in Horseshoe Bay.
Johnson then made a Facebook post requesting other helicopter pilots to join him. A quick reply came from Gideon Carmichael, owner of Carmichael Helicopter Service, Johnson’s competitor half an hour away in Haskell. Carmichael would fly his own chopper.
Back home, Johnson spent Tuesday making calls. Eventually the team was given its first mission: arrive in Fort Worth Wednesday morning, pick up 10 boxes of blood and deliver the cargo to a Red Cross staging area in Houston.
What would soon be dubbed “The West Texas Air Force” — a group initially composed of a partner, a competitor and two employees on an unpaid disaster-relief vacation with their boss, equipped with three helicopters, as well two of Johnson’s 1,500-gallon fuel trucks filled at no cost by Avfuel in Abilene — headed into Harvey.
By Wednesday at dusk, the first mission, which also distributed 2,000 hot meals to Red Cross facilities, was complete.
But later that evening, a Facebook post by Cuatro Strack was brought to their attention. It read:
“We need as many helicopters down in Wharton County, first light Airport KARM. Aviation fuel on hand.”
Before dawn on Thursday, the choppers headed southwest to Wharton.
They arrived to muddy waters covering farm and ranch land as far as they could see. Single-story homes, fence lines, trucks, tractors and trailers were submerged.
Johnson’s experience in aerial assistance with automobile accidents, fires and missing child searches has taught him “nothing is more critical than time.”
So, upon landing, when it became clear local officials had no organized plan, the team quickly departed, conducting their own search and rescue for people within a 40-mile radius. Soon U.S. Coast Guardsmen arrived and were pointed to homes with signals of distress — white sheets and mattresses upon, and ladders extended to, rooftops.
Then the team, joined by five more responding choppers, shifted focus to moving cattle and horses to higher ground — a task for which West Texas helicopter pilots were well prepared.
For the duration of Thursday, they pushed cattle throughout the area. Johnson, Carmichael and Bosig, demonstrating the skill of maneuvering aircraft on water that doesn’t provide the rotor lift of solid ground, frequently lowered Smith and Durrett down to surface level. The men would hop from the skids and swim to cut fencing through which cattle and horses could escape.
“On a scale of bad things I’ve ever seen, the flooding was 100. Anything previous was a 10,” Johnson told me. Brosig could only describe what he saw as “outrageous” after witnessing animals’ noses, then ears, vanish below the surface. “I’ll never forget the water or the animals,” he said.
The team estimates they moved some 2,400 head of cattle and 100 horses on Thursday.
They flew to Beaumont on Friday morning where they delivered doctors and equipment. Then they moved more animals.
I asked Johnson why he’s taken up this endeavor. His reply: “We have the equipment, the ability, and we know what we’re doing. We had no excuse.”
And that, more than anything, puts the “West Texas” in The West Texas Air Force.
