Operation Airdrop-General Aviation Responds to Hurricane Florence
Published on October 2018
Hurricane Florence delivered five days of heavy rain to the Carolina low countries. One friend said the crescendo of flooding “was like being stalked by a turtle: slow but relentless.” With Florence, the damage was not caused by high winds but by flood waters that overwhelmed dikes, covered roads, tore out bridges, and rendered large parts of North and South Carolina completely inaccessible. For a week, the coastal city of Wilmington was an island: 200,000 people were completely isolated. Given the size of this catastrophe, general aviation pilots across the southeastern United States put down their hundred-dollar hamburgers in September 2018 to become an integral part of the emergency relief effort for Hurricane Florence. More than 250 G.A. pilots, including myself in my old Centurion, volunteered to fly relief supplies to the closest point of need. No reimbursement was involved; all the pilots donated their time, their planes, and the fuel. This is the story of "Operation Airdrop."
