Locals create multi-state Irma disaster relief effort
BY PRU SOWERS
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
“It just snowballed.”
This is how former Key West resident Surrey Westrupp describes the volunteer storm disaster effort she and a stranger put together immediately after Hurricane Irma hit the Lower Keys. Strangers no more, although they have never actually met in person Westrupp, a former bartender at 801 and Aqua Key West, and Big Torch Key homeowner Maggie Whitcomb used a unique walkie-talkie cell phone app, determination and a lot of heart to build a volunteer network stretching from Georgia to Tennessee to the Florida Keys that used, among other things, unsanctioned airplane and boat deliveries to get supplies to Lower Keys residents who had no electricity, water or communications.
Living now in Nashville, Tenn., Westrupp first frantically tried to contact her friends in Key West when Irma blasted through. With all power and cell phone communications out, Westrupp turned to Zello, an application she had heard about that allows push-to-talk walkie-talkie communications over cell phone networks. Signing up and linking in, Westrupp was able to pull together a small group of people who first wanted information about Key West, then offered to help. Learning that Key West did not suffer the brunt of Irma’s destruction, Westrupp stayed on Zello and started using her Facebook page to find volunteers to make welfare checks of people further up the Keys who did not evacuate.
Enter Maggie Whitcomb. She and her family have a vacation home in Big Torch Key, which they evacuated from shortly before Irma hit. Having family on the Mississippi Gulf coast who suffered through Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Whitcomb and her husband, Richard, wanted to help, despite the fact their own Big Torch Key house was seriously damaged. She got on Zello and immediately heard Westrupp’s voice organizing welfare checks and supply donations.
“I was so impressed with Surrey. She stayed so calm when people were trying to get information,” Whitcomb said. “I started covering for Surrey when she needed to go do her work. Gradually, I just got more experienced with it. Then they started adding me to deeper channels for operations.”
Whitcomb had a friend who owned a plane. That friend knew five pilots. Suddenly, a potential supply delivery system came together when the pilots volunteered to fly from Atlanta to the Keys. The question? Where to land, since the closest public airfield in Marathon was closed. And while Westrupp had friends offering their boats to ferry supplies to the Lower Keys, the waterways were put off-limits by Monroe County officials because of debris in the water and the fact emergency responders were just arriving on scene and didn’t want more civilians crowding into potentially dangerous areas. But those were just logistic challenges to overcome.
“We were sending boats of supplies from Key Largo. I was on Google Maps trying to tell people where to dock. We were able to get some planes and we were landing them at Summerland [Key Cove] Airport. Our volunteers were sleeping in the hangers. People just messaged me, ‘we have donations.’ We started staging supplies at Maggie Whitcomb’s house in Big Torch Key,” Westrupp said.
“We found out pretty early on that no one was policing Summerland airstrip. So, nobody was there to tell us we couldn’t fly in there,” Whitcomb said, adding that she coordinated with Yogini Modi, a Fixed Based Operator (FOB), who provides aeronautical services such as fuel at the private Summerland airport, to schedule the flights. Modi, another person Whitcomb has not met in person but who was instrumental in their recovery effort, also helped coordinate off-loading supplies from larger planes landing at Atlanta International Airport to the smaller planes needed to land on the short landing strip at Summerland.
The next step was finding volunteers to unload the planes at Summerland Airport, put the supplies onto trucks and move them to where they were most needed. Whitcomb and her husband created a network of six distribution depots where the supplies were delivered and handed out to residents. They first looked at where the Monroe County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was distributing its supplies, then went to where they weren’t.
“They all but omitted the Lower Keys,” she said about the EOC. “I knew what’s where there would be the most damage.”
Whitcomb, back in her primary residence in Decatur, Georgia, drove to Sam’s Club to purchase tents, ice chests, camp chairs, toothpaste and a variety of other supplies for the volunteers to use while they were manning the six supply depots. And every day, she and Westrupp put out a daily wish list of donations they needed. By the time the airplane brigade – which had grown thanks to AERObridge, a private aviation organization that coordinates donated aircraft to ferry supplies to emergency response teams in disaster areas – ended on Sept. 18, over 400 flights had been made into Summerland.
“This was literally a full-time job,” Whitcomb said, now in her Big Torch Key home, which is crammed to the walls with volunteers staying there while they help with the recovery in the Lower Keys. “We were on Zello around the clock.”
“Maggie and my local contacts helped immensely. We all ended up working pretty well together. I’ve never met these people. I’m still in awe of what social media has done and how it has totally changed the game,” said Westrupp, adding, “That’s what we do in Key West. It’s just second nature to get in there, get your hands dirty and help out.”
And it’s not over. Whitcomb and Westrupp are using an on-line form at their new web page, www.crisisreliefteam.org, that allows people needing assistance with debris removal, supplies, roof tarps and a host of other storm-related chores to sign up. Over 196 forms, called “tickets,” have been received so far. Volunteers can use another on-line form on the same web page to offer their help.
With the increasing ability of social media and tech tools like Zello to connect people, Whitcomb says she wants to create a civilian disaster relief organization to help in other locations in the future. Although state and local officials sometimes bridle at civilian efforts, believing a central organization can provide safer and more efficient relief, Whitcomb disagrees.
“It really says something when people who don’t know each other, from across the country, can correspond and convene on the ground and take care of people better than the Red Cross, the EOC, everybody,” she said. “If you’ve got people willing and capable of rendering aid, let them help. They’re not asking for money. They just want to help their fellow Americans.”
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Having spent the week prior to the hurricane working with local churches (St Peter in BPK and The Vineyard), AOPA and Aerobridge to set up charity flights either OUT of Summerland Key if Irma hit the Bahamas or into Summerland Key Airport if it hit the Keys, and then managing the use of our airfield for relief flights during the subsequent weeks, I’m genuinely surprised I’ve never met Surrey or her pilots. Perhaps it’d be worth a call to the owners and/or Airport Manager (me) of Summerland Key Cove Airport before printing a story like this?
This is the biggest load of shit article I have read in weeks. If anyone believes a single word of this, I have job openings for the tunnel between Key West and Cuba that need to be filled.
While the article regrettably does have some inaccuracies, it is NOT what you claim. My name is Maggie Whitcomb and I am a co-founder (with Surrey Westrupp, Tim Sorenson and Taylor Fontenot) of Crisis Relief Team. We are very real people who did very useful things in the Lower Keys post Irma.
https://www.facebook.com/crisisreliefteam/videos/156531718277197/
This article is a slap in the face to the local and non-local volunteers who actually did create a multi-state relief effort. This article is full of inaccurate information. First, you’re not local if don’t live here! Both Maggie and Surrey don’t even live full-time in keys! I can tell you these people do not know anything about aviation, Summerland airport, or the coordinated relief effort actually that took place out of Summerland. You can’t land at Summerland airport without permission! That’s trespassing! It’s a private airport! You don’t schedule flights into Summerland with Ms. Modi in Homestead?!? “Volunteers were sleeping in hangars.” What? The only hangars on Summerland are those that are part of people’s homes. The only people allowed to do that had permission from the homeowners. The airport manager was there clearing the debris from the runway so aircraft could land and helping to coordinate ACTUAL RELIEF EFFORT with Aerobridge, Military forces, Red Cross, etc. The author, Pru Sowers, should be ashamed of publishing this fallacious article!!!
In an Oct. 12 story in Konk Life about a local relief effort that started after Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Keys, Yogini Modi is the Fixed Base Operator at Miami Homestead General Aviation Airport, not the Summerland Key Cove Airport. Also, Surrey Westrupp and Maggie Whitcomb, the subjects of the story, were not the only volunteers using Summerland Airport to fly supplies into the Keys. The owners of the airport organized a relief effort that was aided by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and AERObridge, the private aviation organization that coordinates donated aircraft to ferry supplies to emergency response teams in disaster areas.