On Saturday, 3 September, the Texas Aviation Association Executive Director sent out a request for help from pilots in the Central Texas area. Supported by local church groups, the Capitol Area Food Bank, and many volunteers, an effort had begun to provide relief supplies to regions in Louisiana and Mississippi which had not yet received “official” relief attention.

 

Bob Gloris and his wife D’Anne organized the effort out of their hangar at Lakeview Aviation, at Lago Vista airport (5R3).

 

As my wife and I were visiting our daughter in Illinois that weekend, I didn’t arrive back in Texas to pick up my first load until Monday the 5 th. After Kit and I flew our RV-6 down from Urbana-Champaign early in the day, I removed the passenger seat and seat back and immediately launched for Lago Vista where I met Bob and D’Anne. My 250 pound load of water and food was to go to Bogalusa, LA (BXA).

 

The trip East was as pleasant, fast and comfortable as only an auto-pilot and stereo equipped RV can provide, on top of the building afternoon cumulus.

 

My arrival at Bogalusa was warmly greeted by local volunteers who would unload aircraft and move the cargo to a church center for distribution or pickup. The Northern end of the runway was washed out, and it’s not often a pilot taxis to a ramp and has to avoid two damaged aircraft, upside down and bent, in the parking area.

 

Looking back, my Bogalusa trip was the most satisfying of my five trips in support of this effort, as I was able to hand out cases of water directly to men who had been rationing their water intake. They were grateful and I was pleased to be able to help them.

 

The trip home into the setting sun gave me time to reflect and be thankful for my situation, knowing that it, too, could change in minutes should an F-5 tornado decide to visit my neighborhood. The devastation would be more limited and help would arrive more quickly, but I would still be just as homeless, without much more than the clothes on my back.

 

I quickly developed a routine that worked for me, based at Taylor, TX (T74). After returning from a trip I would fly to Lago Vista and pick up a load, then fly back to Taylor, fill the tanks and put the plane to bed. I am fortunate to work for a generous company whose managers denied my request for vacation time, telling me instead to just “Go, Do”. Thank you, IBM!

 

I would launch at 0630 each morning, and climb to my cruise altitude in the smooth, cool morning air. The sunrises were usually spectacular! On one trip I flew a two-ship with a friend and fellow chapter member, and his RV-7A - and the sunrise was made even better with his aircraft’s silhouette against it!

 

My subsequent four trips were all into Slidell, LA, located just Northeast of Lake Ponchatrain. As the accompanying pictures show, Slidell was not spared damage. The LA National Guard are using the airport for their staging and helicopter refueling, and a temporary tower is in use on the Unicom frequency. The airspace is crowded, and a single Airborne Early Warning aircraft, call sign “Omaha 44”, assists pilots in dodging helicopters and C-130s alike.

 

At the Slidell end of my trips were several volunteers who unloaded aircraft, loaded trailers and either delivered the supplies to a community distribution center, or delivered directly to hurricane survivors who had no means to get to the centers.

 

Even though I had no direct contact with survivors here (these volunteers were from Austin and Wimberly!), it was still hugely satisfying to contribute to the stacks and stacks of supplies inside the hangar they were using for storage. They said they were hauling it out as fast as we were bringing it in, yet they seemed to never get to the bottom of the pile. One accompanying picture shows four aircraft in line being unloaded, and I know that Falcon Flight of Chapter 187 made at least one trip down as a five-ship flight.

 

The food relief effort is winding down, now, as more ground vehicles are able to get in and transporting cans of beans and bags of rice is definitely more efficient by truck. The volunteer GA support role is far from over, though, as there are still people to move around the country as they locate their families, and anywhere that more perishable cargos are needed. As people movers, the Experimental category aircraft has historically been shunned by organizations such as Angel Flight where the aircraft must be certificated and IFR capable – but I think we have shown that the ranks of the EAA are more than willing and capable of flying such relief missions in our uncertified, frequently day/night VFR “Experimental” aircraft!

 

It has been my privilege to contribute to this effort to help the citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi in the name of Texas and the EAA.