By Emme Hornung

The West Coast and its precarious positioning to the Cascadia Subduction Zone and San Andreas fault puts millions of people at risk — there is a massive earthquake, often called The Big One, expected to occur along these fault lines that would devastate surrounding communities, and it could strike at any time.

Officials encourage communities living in impacted areas to be prepared and have supplies for two weeks with no services or assistance following the earthquake, if not longer, based on current preparedness levels. Two weeks is a long time when lives are on the line — and the West Coast General Aviation Response Plan (WCGARP) was created to address this gap.

“If we had the earthquake today, you would probably see hundreds of pilots jump to action across the West Coast states and British Columbia, doing what they can,” said Sky Terry, regional services director for the Northwest Emergency Volunteer Air Corps (EVAC).

Sky initiated WCGARP in 2016 as an umbrella for numerous West Coast aviation groups including EVAC, CalDART, Oregon DART, BC Aero, and many more from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California, and British Columbia that share a similar goal: preparing pilots to respond to disaster.

A Seaplane Start

Sky, a Washington resident and nurse by trade, first entered the public benefit flying world after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina made him take a good look at the West Coast’s preparedness for the inevitable earthquake.

“The thing that people don’t get, especially in Washington state and the Puget Sound region, is most of our road infrastructure is not on flat ground. It’s perpendicular to river structures, they’re going over passes, or on the side of a mountain,” he said. From Sky’s hometown of Bellingham to the Seattle Children’s Hospital, he has counted 89 structures that would likely be damaged in an earthquake on this one route alone.

Even just through poor weather and rockslides, roads and highways are often closed for periods at a time — I-5 northbound into Whatcom County was closed for a month just recently — so imagine what would happen when the ground starts violently shaking. Roads connecting cities and counties will most likely be inaccessible, cutting off entire communities from resources.

“I didn’t like the odds,” Sky said. “But what about these small aircraft that can land pretty much anywhere, especially seaplanes? I was like, ‘Has anyone thought about those guys?’”

To tap into this resource, around 2009 he started working with the seaplane community of the Washington Seaplane Pilots Association and Kenmore Air, and his organizing of seaplane pilot-based response slowly grew from there. Soon, Rol Murrow from EVAC connected Sky to other aviation groups on the coast with the same goal, which is how he got connected with Paul Marshall, EAA 9025474, the president of CalDART.

Connecting the Coast

Paul’s volunteerism as a pilot starts with EAA’s Young Eagles program, having flown more than 500 kids with EAA Chapter 62 in San Jose, California. He quickly branched out to public benefit flying and started volunteering with Liga International’s Flying Doctors of Mercy program.

However, his inspiration to prepare for disaster came before he was a pilot, living just seven miles from the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“That earthquake made a big impression on me and many people at my airport. The towns of Watsonville and Santa Cruz were cut off from the outside world; all their roads crossed the San Andreas fault, and they were all down,” Paul said. “Local pilots put together an airlift that flew in a half million pounds of food and supplies to the Watsonville airport, which was instrumental in reducing the misery and trouble associated.”

This response was important but unorganized. In 2008, the airport’s chapter of the California Pilots Association (CalPilots) came together and agreed they needed organization when it came to disaster response, and so the California Disaster Airlift Response Team was formed, of which Paul was a founding member.

Now an independent nonprofit, CalDART has more than 400 registered pilots across 13 active chapters and is present at 64 airports in 30 counties.

“In California, there’s something like 52,000 pilots and 26,000 planes. A lot of those people want to help during disasters, and they all come out of the woodwork and say, ‘What can I do?’ In the past that has been very difficult to answer, so our role is to organize things quickly and be able to take pilots off the street, put them through our vetting process, and then get them involved in the response right away,” Paul said.

“Sky was on a very parallel path, putting together emergency volunteer air corps and putting together annual food drives, so we instantly had a good relationship,” he added.

Dealing With Disaster

Aviation groups that are part of WCGARP are not just waiting for The Big One to hit — they actively respond to actual disasters when needed, such as the San Bernardino Mountains snow disaster in 2023. Dubbed the “Miracle on the Mountain,” this activation was a real-life example of how general aviation pilots can save lives through quick response.

“Generally, in California, when there’s a big blizzard, you’re snowed in for a day or two, and then you’re dug out and everything’s fine. But in this particular case, people were snowed in for three weeks, and that was causing huge problems,” Paul said.

It all started with a social media post that found its way to Sky from a San Bernardino resident urgently requesting help. Sky got the residents connected with Paul, who sourced pilots and aircraft while Sky worked with leaders on the ground and in the air to create a distribution plan.

They ended up being activated for eight days, flying for six of them. It was also the first time they had helicopters participate in the response efforts. Helicopters would drop food loads on the mountain, and ground crew distributed supplies to residents via snowmobiles and pickup trucks where possible.

“There was over a thousand people that were totally dependent on the support we gave them. All their grocery stores and their roads were inaccessible,” Sky said.

Prep, Prep, and More Prep

When it comes to The Big One, EVAC, CalDART, and other groups across the West Coast have their own regular training drills.

The annual Thunder Run drill, happening on June 13 this year, is among the many drills that keep pilots familiar with the action plan and procedures, with many Washington and Oregon pilots participating. Sky, a nonpilot, has organized the local food drive, pilot and drop point coordination, and other leadership duties for Thunder Run drills.

“One of the unique things about Thunder Run is we’ve tied it to food donations, so we actually fly cargo,” he said. These practice runs, or “activations” are highly realistic. “We’re flying cargo, we’re moving planes, we have hands on the tarmac. The only difference between the Thunder Run days and the actual earthquake is we haven’t had the planet move. Everything else we’re doing is exactly what we’re going to be doing when the earthquake hits. So, having food be part of it, it forces us to work the logistics.”

The main base of operations for Thunder Run, and in the event of the earthquake, is Walla Walla Regional Airport because it is outside of the impact zone, and pilots fly out to Bellingham, Bowen Field, Skagit Regional, and other airports to practice supply runs.

With near-constant aircraft activity at Walla Walla and other west-side forward hubs during Thunder Run, it’s also an opportunity for ATC and airport management teams to prepare.

“That’s part of the Thunder Run, is testing everything. We need to know what the max capacity of an airbase is. They need to know what to do when that happens,” Sky said. “What’s nice is we actually surge tested the Bellingham International tower in 2025. We had so many aircraft come in at one time, but they took it in stride. They did an amazing job.”

With what WCGARP calls a dead man switch, participating pilots will automatically deploy to designated hubs in the event of an earthquake, knowing the rendezvous point is Walla Walla. Within hours of an earthquake of a magnitude 7.0 or higher, pilots are expected to fly over key areas for scouting and start landing at Walla Walla with vital observation reports of damage that can further aid rescue efforts.  

“I think that’s the biggest game changer from all other kinds of responses. The military has to wait for the lower branches to give them information on where the needs are, or FEMA has to wait, they have to scout, they have to assess. There’s all these things that have to happen before it gets to the upper channel,” Sky said. “The dead man switch changes all that by allowing things to start moving, so that when it’s critical, there should already be aircraft sitting in Walla Walla.”

“Time is everything in a disaster response. If you can get going in a day rather than four days, that’s a huge win,” Paul added.

These recurring training events also serve to start building muscle memory for participating pilots and smooth out logistics so they can react quickly and respond to changing conditions when the earthquake occurs.

“No plans last after the first five minutes. After that, your plan goes to crap and you have to adjust from there, which works if you’ve practiced enough that you have a muscle memory to just work with what you’ve got. And that’s what we’re developing by doing these live lifts with the entire multi-state network,” Sky said.

Pilots who are interested in supporting the preparation efforts can learn more at the WCGARP website, or join a participating aviation group such as CalDART or Oregon DART.

“Anything we can do to accelerate the response is going to count,” Sky said. “Thousands of more people could make it that otherwise would not, because we get the aid in, the supplies in, and get moving right away.”

Sky and Paul are just two among many other leaders and volunteers building on the West Coast’s preparedness, and with all their efforts, general aviation may just be the ace up our sleeve when disaster strikes.