Bringing Hope to the Hopeless
Brian Kelly’s are relief response to disaster hurricanes
Brian Kelly’s first brush with natural calamity predates his 11-year tenure as an FAA air traffic controller. While on active duty with the U.S. Air Force, Kelly’s combat search-and-rescue unit responded to Hurricane Katrina, the storm that destroyed large portions of New Orleans and surrounding areas.
“I was on the first mission after Katrina,” he recalled, serving as a navigator on an HC-130P aircraft refueling helicopters over Lake Pontchartrain.
“It was horrible. We launched before the sun came up. After we passed Mobile [Ala.], there were no lights on the coast. It was a complete blackout. After that first mission, I did the rest of the tactical planning for our unit, including flight planning and TFR approval.” That experience, said Kelly, remains “very close to my heart.” His performance earned him an Air Force Commendation Medal.
Fast-forward 13 years and another devastating Hurricane season. Kelly found himself on the phone with a woman who sounded distraught. It was a week into the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which had staggered communities along the Eastern Seaboard in September 2018. Her town, Maxton, North Carolina, was under water.
“She was on the verge of crying,” said Brian Kelly. “She said, ‘We haven’t gotten any help from anybody, anywhere. Our home is flooded.’”
Kelly’s response: “I will bring you airplanes today.”
Working through Operation Airdrop, an organization with which he volunteers, that same day Kelly was able to arrange a flight of nine aircraft carrying basic supplies into Laurinburg-Maxton Airport. Over the next nine days, Operation Airdrop delivered 60,000 pounds worth of supplies, including 7,000 hot meals.
“The fire department went house to house delivering hot food to people who hadn’t eaten in a week,” recalled Kelly, emotion in his voice. It’s the type of scenario he has seen play out repeatedly over the course of five hurricanes working with Operation Airdrop.
The volunteer organization formed in August 2017 to respond to Hurricane Harvey, which had devastated the Houston area. Kelly, an 11-year air traffic controller at Dallas Love Field, received a text from a friend, who had joined a Facebook page looking for pilots to help deliver emergency supplies to the Houston area. Although he wasn’t current on his pilot’s license, Kelly still wanted in.
“I was on the first flight,” recalled Kelly. He flew on a Cessna 421 loaded with supplies for delivery to a local Salvation Army facility. “The next day after, I was asked to join the Facebook group.”
After the quick succession of Hurricanes Irma and Maria weeks later, the founder of the Facebook group decided to formalize Operation Airdrop into a non-profit organization. Its network of almost 400 volunteer pilots has since expanded to more than double that number with pilots located all over the country, but especially in the south central and southwestern part of the United States.
Kelly’s background as a controller, coupled with his Air Force experience, may have also played a part in his being invited to serve on Operation Airdrop’s board of directors. Now, when a natural disaster hits, he and the board are the first to mobilize.
“The first thing we do is verify the need for airlifted supplies,” he explained. Next, the team identifies a nearby airport to which they can deliver supplies. Then they contact a fixed-based operator on the airport to receive and store supplies. They then identify a local charity that can distribute the goods. The final step is to put out a call for volunteer pilots and donations.
The organization has begun to expand its resources. It is working with an investment firm in North Carolina that wants to provide supplies for children — diapers, wipes, formula, and other needs — in the initial days after a catastrophe. It is also focusing on increasing its fundraising.
Communities have not been shy in showing their gratitude. Hardin County residents Dale Williford and Pam Dunlap expressed their “deep, heartfelt appreciation” to the pilots of more than 140 airplanes who delivered supplies to their communities — or “temporary islands” — after Hurricane Harvey. “Brian Kelly and all the wonderful folks with Operation Airdrop were a pleasure to work with,” they added.
Operation Airdrop’s assistance strikes a personal chord with Kelly; he has a relative who lost her house, and another whose home sustained serious damage after hurricanes. The most difficult aspect of working for the relief organization personally, though, is the burden it puts on his wife and three-year-old son.
“The hardest part is leaving my family at home and not seeing my wife and child for seven or eight days,” said Kelly, who has used 15 days of personal leave to assist with Operation Airdrop. Even when he worked out of his home during Operation Airdrop’s first, hastily organized response to Harvey, the stress remained. “I was here, but my wife said I wasn’t ‘here.’” Over Labor Day weekend, while families around the country took one last opportunity to enjoy summer vacation, Kelly and his colleagues worked all day until 8:30 p.m. coordinating flights for Harvey relief.
Now three, his son misses his father while he’s on assignment. “He understood that daddy’s helping people,” Kelly explained.
Kelly credits the “excellent support network” that has developed through his parents, who live nearby, and from their small church group. “We believe that helping others is what we are called to do in life, and while I am ‘deployed,’ our family and church friends become to support my support system. I can’t thank my wife enough for supporting me through all of this. As the Combat Search and Rescue motto goes, I fully believe and live: ‘These things we do, that others may live.’”
Kelly’s work with Operation Airdrop has opened his eyes to the significance of “compassion flights.” While these types of flights don’t take priority over others, FAA controllers do their best to expedite them, especially during emergencies.
“I now see more the importance of these flights and the ability to tell our flights from other ones,” said Kelly. “The key is compassion. These [pilots] are helping out. They don’t get ‘Lifeguard Priority’ status, but they’re able to get extra help from controllers if they can.”
Kelly now inputs pilot information into a spreadsheet and sends it to FAA air traffic control Officials to assign transponder codes and further expedite flights into and out of disaster areas. During the Hurricane Harvey response, he helped coordinate 60 flights into and out of Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport giving him a renewed respect for his controller colleagues.
“Controllers at Houston Approach did a fantastic job,” he said.
With the approach of hurricane season, Kelly and his colleagues at Operation Airdrop are mentally preparing themselves. But no matter the disaster, the bedrock of Kelly’s experience has been the gratitude he has seen on the faces, heard in the voices, read in the papers about Operation Airdrop’s efforts. As he summed it up: “[It’s] when we hear, ‘Your supplies have helped us; you brought hope to our hopelessness.’”
