This marks our kickoff of planning for Thunder Run 2026!
To start off, we have a new Thunder Run website to help our volunteers and supporters learn more about the exercise and how they can help us prepare for this upcoming exercise.
After many years of incredible leadership from Sky Terry, Sky is stepping back a bit and we are happy to have Ross Comer stepping in to lead the effort. Thankfully, Sky, as well as the Emergency Volunteer Air Corps (EVAC) team led by Rol Murrow will be helping ensure Thunder Run continues to be an amazing event.
Please check out our site, and especially our Volunteer opportunities to see where you can help out today.
This year’s annual Thunder Run exercise brought an extraordinary display of collaboration, preparedness, and community spirit to Bellingham International Airport (BLI). The event, designed to test and improve the use of general aviation in emergency scenarios, focused on food collection and aerial distribution to support food banks across Washington State and the West Coast. The goal? To better prepare for a major disaster like a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.
Using small to medium aircraft, food was transported from the central hub at BLI to multiple satellite locations, simulating how critical supplies could be moved quickly in a real crisis. The tarmac buzzed with activity—at one point nearly overflowing with aircraft—captured in incredible live footage from the day’s operations.
The DART (Disaster Airlift Response Team) ground crew at BLI, demonstrated remarkable flexibility by redeploying mid-exercise from a satellite site—an unprecedented move that kept operations running smoothly under pressure.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to everyone who made the event possible, especially the dedicated staff at Bellingham International Airport, Bellingham Aviation Services, and the outstanding Air Traffic Control team who expertly handled the surge in air traffic.
From pilots and ground teams to ham radio operators, volunteers, donors, community partners, and emergency responders, Thunder Run 2025 showcased what’s possible when we come together for resilience and readiness.
On Sept 12th we had yet another annual successful food flight disaster exercise but before we go into that I wanted to touch on a few other milestones that occurred this year that has been a year for the books.
We started planning for the Sep 12 th drill early in the year and as one of the ones planning this exercises this has definitely been a year of change after change due to of all things a pandemic that threw more curve balls into an effort than one could possibly count and more then I have ever seen in my entire life. But at the same time, wow did GA come through all over the place in many states. What is also worth noting is it was the first time the West Coast General Aviation Response Plan (WCGARP) got used.
Both loads went to the Walla Walla DART group as that county was the most isolated of the DART’s in WA that I’ve been working with and had the least amount of available resources, so I made that call.
I reached out to both CalDART, https://caldart.org/which make up the southern part of the WCGARP line and also Aerobridgehttps://aerobridge.org/ who is one of the national GA groups that was responding in multiple states. These two groups did an amazing job.
CalDart was the first group to find a source for PPE, in this case 500 face shields, of which they coordinated the sourcing of this and used their own DART pilots to fly the load directly from the donor in California direct to Walla Walla WA in a day where it was accepted by the Walla Walla DART lead and Walla Walla Emergency Management where it was further distributed to the front line medical workers.
Then it was Aerobridge’s turn in the slot. I reached out to the national Aerobridge group to let them know of the need for PPE for this area and they did an amazing job of sourcing 3,000 face shields, organizing their own pilots, getting the shields and flying them directly from California to Walla Walla in a day. Once there it was then collected by the Walla Walla DART lead and given to the Emergency Management where it was further distributed to the front-line medical workers. This was a god send for this community in a time of crisis where everyone was having extreme difficulties getting the badly need protective equipment for the front-line medical workers to safely do their jobs to serve others. It was amazing.
Delivery of Aerobridge Face ShieldsDeliver of CalDART Face Shields
This was an amazing effort that really brought home the importance of GA in disaster and especially with the earthquake that the west coast faces. What is ironic is just the year before we had drilled this having it be the reverse where Walla Walla was the out of impact area hub and it was where the supplies were moved from. So, it’s good to know that when the time comes this use of GA will work and be ready to do so as we’ve been developing it for the last 10 years.
So back to September 12th.
So, with all the above having occurred we were primed to do this exercise. It involved HAM elements in Kitsap County, Renton Field site, Volunteer HAM operators from Puget Sound Energy in Whatcom County, the Walla Walla DART group and the local ARES HAM’s up there, Idaho Pilots Association Pilot, EVAC leadership, the Renton Boeing Employees Flight Association, Island County ARES/HAM’s, the WCGARP HAM lead and our own WC EVAC DART up here of which the below pictures are from this location.
For our site this started with a food drive in July of which this is the 4th year of doing these drills of this type and our 10-year anniversary of doing live exercises up in Whatcom County. The food that was collected was distributed to not one but two food banks with one of them being the Point Roberts food bank which is a community that is currently cut off in many senses of the word. The food drive portion of this effort totaled out to 2,472 lbs. which is remarkable considering it’s done in the middle of a pandemic, during one of the worst economic times in our nation and we even blew past last year’s collection of just over 1,500 lbs. It took a lot of people to accomplish this phenomenal feat and a huge thank you goes to the Lake Way Fred Meyers for being the public drop point for the food donations while doing this of all things in the middle of a major remodel. We can’t thank the Bellingham Fred Meyers staff enough for their support in making this happen. Also a big thank you goes to Eden Home Health who also supported this with an internal food drive, the U-Haul off of Meridian that donated one of their trucks to move the food, Movement Mortgage who made a very large donation, Emergency Volunteer Air Corps who did so likewise, the local Washington Pilots Association chapter who’s members donated and even flew the food, the Point Roberts Food Bank that went above and beyond to learn a whole new way to do things, the Bellingham Food Bank and last but not least the amazing community of Bellingham who came together to pull off a miracle.
WC EVAC DART & Island County DART RepresentativeDonated U-haul Truck & Lake Way Fred Meyer Staff
Additionally, thanks to the HAM’s efforts, for the first time there was successful exchange of communication from the West side of the state to the East side. If there was ever a cornerstone to a response effort having the ability to get out what the needs are and what the damage is, this would be one of them and we did that on Sept 12, 2020.
What is truly awesome about this was even within the drill we had redundancy in that even though the pony express flights that were intended to go to Walla Walla originating from the West Side all got grounded due to the miserable smoke conditions we still got the needed messaging out. This tied with everything else really does give us the start of our first true timeline in terms of getting notification out to a national response element to include how long before fuel could get to Walla Walla to be airlifted out to the hubs. So, a major step forward for our efforts. All the other sites involved also were able to accomplish this which is a major milestone for our state’s readiness.
Whatcom County EVAC DART (Sky Terry, Tobias Ryan, Brian Johnson), Island County DART Representative (Ron Conlin), Puget Sound Energy HAM Volunteers (Ed Espinosa and Dee Williamson) providing crucial HAM communications.
Donated U-haul truck from Meridian U-haul in BellinghamLoading up the donated food from the Lake Way Fred MeyersLoading out the food to the Bellingham Food Bank Sky and family along with Kristin Costanza and Bill PearsallPilots were Paul Zosel and Maureen Griggs.WC EVAC DART Pilots dropping off their load at Point Roberts
This was yet again another major step forward for our state’s readiness and for the use of General Aviation in a disaster. Thank you to everyone who has put so much heart and sweat into such a vital resource.
Thunder Run 