GENERAL AVIATION TO THE RESCUE Continued from page 15 BOHLKE INTERNATIONAL AIRWAYS – ST. CROIX, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS The Bohlke family has operated on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands for nearly 60 years and has been refining its comprehensive hurricane readiness plan from the begin- ning. So, when Hurricane Irma formed and hit nearby island communities hard in September 2017, Bohlke International Airways President and CEO Billy Bohlke Jr. and his team leapt into action to help out. “When Irma hit, St. Croix and Puerto Rico were spared on that initial storm, while some of our neighbors were just destroyed; St. Thomas, St. John, Tortola and Water Island really got nailed,” Capt. Bohlke says. “We immediately started doing a lot of medical airlifts. We also did a ton of flights out to help deliver relief supplies and evacuate people. The U.S. government based a lot of its Irma relief efforts out of St. Croix, and the British Royal Air Force also used our island as a staging point to help the British Virgin Islands. We also had a lot of donated corporate aircraft coming through to take supplies to the outer islands—baby formula, water, medical supplies, whatever. We were basically run- ning around the clock, and we even brought in additional line crew from the States to help.” Just 12 days later, the tables turned dramatically. “We were in full swing helping out the islands hit by Irma, when it became clear that Hurricane Maria was coming right for us,” Bohlke says. “Here we were sending all of our sup- plies to help the other islands, then we see this other storm coming. It was a Category 3 hurricane as it was approaching Dominica, when we made the call to evacuate to Curaçao.” In the two hours it took Bohlke’s team to get its aircraft and staff evacuated to Curaçao, 470 miles to the south, the storm was upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane with winds exceeding 157 miles per hour. “It ended up passing about 10 miles to the south of St. Croix and the FBO got whacked,” Bohlke explains. “It really nailed us, tearing the roofs off buildings, wiping out the power. Some people on our team lost their homes, every- thing. Puerto Rico got hammered. We knew we had to get people up in the air and back on St. Croix as quickly as pos- sible, because we knew the need was going to be great.” 16 Bohlke returned to St. Croix at the first opportunity: his was the first civilian plane to fly into Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX) in St. Croix after Hurricane Maria hit. He found Bohlke International Airways in tatters. “Our hangar was destroyed. Our main building was destroyed. Our Part 145 maintenance facility luckily survived unscathed. Our power, phone lines and cell phone towers were out. But, when I landed after coming in from Curaçao, I was promptly met by a U.S. Marine saying, ‘Sir, we need fuel.’ So, we started peeling sheet metal off our fuel trucks and went right back to work. We found a temporary hangar to occupy down the road, brought that live within 48 hours, set up camp, and started operating again almost immediately. We are tremendously grateful for our partners, Avfuel and Puma Energy, for all their help with fuel logistics and maintaining a stable supply line. They made sure we had a consistent supply of product to fuel our retail, government and military custom- ers, and to keep our own planes in the air as needed.” AeroMD, the four-aircraft air ambulance fleet for which Bohlke acts as strategic aviation partner operating from the FBO, played a critical role in the relief efforts in the days immediately following Hurricane Irma and for months after. “The medevac operation was amazing; our team was fly- ing medical airlift sorties every day for 100 days straight,” Bohlke adds. In addition to the four capable medical aircraft platforms in his fleet, every aircraft at the FBO was put into service in the days, weeks and months following. Bohlke says more than 100,000 miles were flown during the response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and the FBO became a hub for coordinating multi-international relief efforts from the Aviation Business Journal | 3rd Quarter 2018
