On Saturday, July 9 several members of the Three Rivers Volunteer Fire Department (Clallam County Fire Dist. #6) spent the morning at the Quillayute Airport. Volunteer firemen Cordy Brickey, Andrew Chapman, and Chip Keen along with Mark Soderlind from the Food Bank unloaded about 1,000 pounds of food and water that were flown in from Fairchild Airport as part of a county-wide exercise by the Clallam County Disaster Airlift Response Team (DART)(clallamdart.com/).

Alan Barnhart with Clallam DART, had come to Forks on Tuesday the 5th to train volunteers from the Forks (District 1) and Three Rivers (District 6) departments, as well a few people from Forks Ambulance on how to work around airplanes as part of disaster relief.

About 20 people attended the training. The training and the decision to land at Quillayute came together at the last minute as the original plan was to land the supplies at the Forks airport, but then it was discovered that West End Thunder was racing on the weekend.

The Clallam County DART has conducted similar training exercises over the last 5 years. These exercises are designed to simulate real-world responses in disaster scenarios from floods etc. to a full-scale Cascadia level earthquake, delivering critical supplies in the aftermath of these disasters where limited or no road travel can reach our county areas that could be cut off by bridge failures, landslides, flooding etc.

The Clallam County DART has 30 volunteer pilots and 15 volunteer Ground Support folks who periodically train for these scenarios.