Dennis Pierre, emergency co-ordinator with Siska First Nation, helps unload toys and supplies delivered by the West Coast Pilot Club's 'Operation Elf.'Photography by Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
More below • Video: Operation Elf in action
Two weeks ago, Shaun Heaps realized that a lot of kids from B.C.’s flood-ravaged Southern Interior were going to be without presents on Christmas morning. The highways and bridges to remote communities such as Siska, Spence’s Bridge, Nooaitch and Nicomen were wiped out by last month’s horrific flooding. With engineers focused on repairing the Coquihalla, Highway 1 and other key routes, many smaller communities were still trapped, six weeks after the storms.
So the jolly, six-and-a-half-foot-tall pilot with mischievous eyes and rose-coloured cheeks decided a little Christmas magic was in order.
Mr. Heaps, a gentle giant who wears shorts and a tuque all winter long, rallied a dozen pilots with the West Coast Pilot Club. This week, they launched “Operation Elf,” flying hundreds of pounds of toys to flooded communities. “Pilots love nothing more than a mission,” says Mr. Heaps, who has a little round belly, and an X-rated image of his wife, Theresa, tattooed to his right calf.
There was no Dasher or Donner or Prancer in sight. But there were Pipers and Cessnas and a helo or two.
Shaun Heaps, right, and Amarjit Dhadwar help prepare a helicopter for takeoff at the Langley Regional Airport, the West Coast Pilot Club's home base.
The club is able to reach remote areas of B.C. whose roads were left impassable when an 'atmospheric river' washed them out earlier this year.
Team dispatch manager Brenda Lennax, dressed in a Santa suit, co-ordinates the donated gifts and supplies to be flown out.
Monday morning dawned “severe clear”: a cloudless, blue sky with seemingly unlimited visibility. “A good day for miracles,” Brenda Lennax, the team’s dispatch manager, shouted, rallying the volunteers and pilots outside the sky-blue clubhouse at the Langley Regional Airport. “Let’s go!”
Such December days are as rare as a Christmas miracle in B.C.’s rainy Lower Mainland. Crystalline skies allowed pilots flying 12 planes and three helicopters to drop multiple loads of Playmobil sets, Mandalorian stuffies, baby dolls, Star Wars puzzles and tiny guitars throughout the region.
“I love to fly. That we’re helping people is a bonus,” pilot Liam Wright said. He has been volunteering almost daily since flying into Nicomen a week after the storm and realizing the community was surviving on rationed food. “Government has abdicated its responsibility here. It’s disgraceful how little help they are providing people. There is no airlift coming in with food. It’s just us.”
Operation Elf, it turned out, was the final leg of a mammoth mission the club’s 40 pilots launched in the days after the flooding.
They started early on in the disaster by flying into Hope, ferrying out stranded motorists. “It was like a war zone,” says Sigmund Sort, a flight instructor who has been flying in every day from his home on Vancouver Island to help. “People were lined up waiting for us in Hope. They would reach out or tug at our jackets as we walked past – desperate to get our attention, desperate to get out. They would start shaking and weeping when we told them we would get them home.”
One single mother of five had been stranded without her kids for five days. “She was an emotional wreck. It hits you in your core.”
Volunteer pilot Liam Wright heads to a dropoff in Siska. The club has 40 pilots that have flown thousands of pounds of material to cut-off communities since November.
B.C.'s forests, badly damaged by the summer's extreme heat and wildfires, were ill-prepared for November's floods: the baked, ashy mountain soil had become a water-resistant surface that made mudslides and road outages worse.
In Siska, pilot Mark Action, left, hands off gifts to Simon Smith, who was a volunteer firefighter during the big summer fires.
And every day since the November storms, a team of 40 volunteer pilots have been buzzing in and out of a hangar in Langley, flying thousands of kilograms of food and other essentials to any community needing help. “We’re just a bunch of regular joes, filling a gap that needs to be filled,” says Mr. Heaps, a retired firefighter.
Money for supplies and fuel has come from donations and the pilots’ own pockets. Area Sikh gurdwaras have donated more than $40,000 to the effort. Mamas for Mamas, a charity that supports mothers and caregivers in need, donated most of the toys. Mr. Heaps figures he has spent $70,000 of his savings on fuel.
Communities themselves are charged with dispersing the goods. Siska set up a general store in their community hall; shelves are packed with tampons, diapers, canned food, juice, cookies and Kraft Dinner. Ms. Lennax makes sure they only send things that people need: “How many pregnant women do you have? How many kids? How old are they? Who is sick? Do they need any medicine?”
Community members are invited to take whatever they require, says Dennis Lapierre, Siska’s emergency co-ordinator. On Monday, he ploughed a metre of fresh snow to create a makeshift landing zone in an open field to allow three choppers to come in.
By Tuesday morning, the weather had taken an even worse turn, making the toy drop increasingly urgent. “Freezing rain’s coming,” Mr. Heaps yelled. “I need you to get loaded as fast as you can.”
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After the last of the toys, air mattresses, fleece blankets and jackets were loaded onto planes bound for Merritt, his wife, Teresa, called out: “Shaun-Mart is officially closed!” And so it was: after seven long weeks, the exhausted pilots had got the job done. Well, almost.
Thirty minutes into the final flight to the Nicomen First Nation outside Lytton, the chopper was forced to make an precautionary landing on a frozen sand bank on the Fraser River. The pilot could no longer see through the windshield. Using the back end of a black Bic lighter, he chipped off a thick layer of ice. There was ice on his blades, too, forcing him to turn back for Langley: It was not safe to fly.
Ms. Lennax, who was dressed as an elf, broke down after learning that kids in Nicomen would not get their presents in time. The team, who have been working round the clock for the past 40 days was absolutely spent.
But their kindness reserves were not. A team is planning to come back to the hangar as soon as the freezing rain lets up, to make one final run to Nicomen, and get those kids their toys.
‘We live for this’: Operation Elf in action
The Langley Regional Airport has transformed into Operation Elf headquarters, delivering toys and essentials to B.C. communities in need. Meet the pilots who've taken up the challenge.
Nancy Macdonald