Volunteer Pilots on Alert to Fly Relief Missions to Tangier Island and Virginia’s Eastern Shore
Virginia Department of Emergency Management Calls on General Aviation for Help
Volunteer pilots certified with HSEATS—Homeland Security Emergency Air Transportation System—stand ready to assist with relief and recovery efforts in Tangier, Virginia and on the Eastern Shore. HSEATS is a program of Mercy Medical Airlift. Both the three-mile long, Chesapeake Bay island town of 600 residents, and localities along Virginia’s eastern shore experienced heavy flooding and devastation from Hurricane Sandy. The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) has put HSEATS pilots on notice to ferry relief workers into these areas.
The pilots use their own private aircraft to fly relief workers, blood supplies and other critical items into regions devastated by natural or man-made disasters. Mercy Medical Airlift is also known for the service it provides to patients in need of charitable transport to distant, specialized medical treatment.
On October 31, HSEATS provided a reconnaissance flight to photograph storm damage to Saxis, Virginia, located on the Bay side of upper Accomack County. Volunteer pilot Steve Craven reported that “several structures were damaged by wind or storm surge. There was a fair amount of flooding. The main road in and out of Saxis had been under water.” He also flew over Crisfield, Maryland, and noted “quite a bit of flooding. The airport runway (W41) was underwater.”
During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, HSEATS provided over 2,600 flights into and out of the stricken Gulf region, second only in service to the United States military. Other missions were undertaken in Alabama in 2011 and Kentucky in March of this year when tornadoes ravaged portions of those states.