24 Hours At the Epicenter of the Hurricane Helene Disaster

“Tonight, we need men standing watch for black bears and FEMA.” Those were the two primary concerns North Carolina native, Army Special Forces veteran, and preparedness group “Savage Freedoms” founder Adam Smith relayed to us before we bivouacked for the night to our respective corners of the Harley Davidson dealership. The partially damaged but resilient structure was our makeshift forward operating base in Asheville, North Carolina.

Johnathan Wilson, another special forces veteran and close friend of Smith, gave us a quick primer on how to handle an encounter with either bears or FEMA. While most of the dozen men arrayed before Smith and Wilson needed no reminder on how to handle a bear, the threat of FEMA seemed more serious.

Both concerns had already made themselves evident. One of the men showed us photos of bear tracks in the mud. They were attracted by the scent of garbage that Hurricane Helene had scattered throughout the area.

As for FEMA, they, or a public official acting on their behalf, had already approached the group earlier that week, “encouraging” the men to shut down their relief operation and evacuate the area.

But neither bear nor bureaucrat would stop Smith, Wilson, or the men they had assembled from delivering aid to communities hard-hit by Helene and who feel that the response from the federal government has been inadequate at best.

Forty-eight hours earlier, I had received a call from a friend, Bryson, from my church. Bryson is a veteran and former Army medic. He wanted to deliver supplies to North Carolina and asked if I would join him. At this point, early reports suggested that FEMA, though late to act, was taking control of the situation. At best, we would support the relief and recovery efforts. At worst, we’d drop off food and aid for the displaced.

About an hour outside what public reporting told us was the “FEMA-approved” donation site, Bryson received a call suggesting we reroute to a group of veterans and locals in Swannanoa, a small town between Asheville and Black Mountain. The FEMA drop-off location was an hour outside the area hardest hit by the storm; Swannanoa was in the heart of it.

Swannanoa, North Carolina, is 2,225 feet above sea level in the middle of the rugged Appalachian Mountains. You’d hardly think a hurricane – no matter how strong – could touch this small community.

But as we drove into town with roughly 300 pounds of food, water, baby wipes, and dog food, we noticed a line of dried mud toward the top of an exit sign standing 20 feet above the road – a marker of how high the floodwaters had surged just days before.

As we got closer, other volunteers repeatedly warned us that FEMA would likely tell us to turn back if we encountered them. Bryson, not above subterfuge for the right cause, had us wear reflector vests and headlamps in the hope a more official-looking outfit would quell the suspicion of FEMA officials. Surprisingly, the closer we got, the fewer officials we saw. The last five miles, in the heart of the disaster area, beyond two police cruisers, there wasn’t a single government agent.

Outside the Harley dealership’s rear garage, on mud-caked gravel, sat easily over a hundred pallets of bottled water. Directly across from the water, under an extended awning, were another hundred pallets of food, hygiene products, over-the-counter medicine, and other essential goods. Beyond the supplies was a large, grassy field upon which sat three small helicopters with several more inbound.

Smith and Wilson had converted the garage interior into an operations center. This is where they briefed us. By the time we arrived, they had been operational for almost a week. Smith oversaw the main operation, directing men and materials to where they were needed most.

Bryson and I were among the dozen men being briefed by Smith and Wilson. Each man in the room was a veteran, a local, or had some sort of specialized skill to help with the relief effort. Some were ex-special forces. Others were members of the Civilian Crisis Response Team, an organization of 2,000 civilian volunteers across 19 states dedicated to disaster relief.

Aeroluxe Aviation, “Tennessee’s premier helicopter operator,” had tasked three helicopters, pilots, and support personnel to the mission. Their primary business was flight tours. They were sacrificing thousands of dollars in lost revenue and manpower to commit the bulk of their assets to this mission. Every person in that room was taking time away from their families and businesses to risk their lives for their fellow Americans, and not one asked for compensation.

Absent from this group was any government liaison or FEMA official to support our efforts.

I was tasked with helping a group of men deliver water into Forrest Hills. The area was mostly elderly individuals and mobile homes. They had been without water for days. The road there, Old US Highway 70, resembled something out of a warzone. Cars weren’t just overturned or destroyed, they were contorted and twisted into nightmarish shapes. Houses were without power. People wandered aimlessly down the road.

After we dropped off a gigantic 1,000-gallon water drum and filled it up, I asked the water truck owner how he ended up there. He and his wife had married less than a year ago and lived in Charlotte outside of the affected area, but they drove in just to see if they could help. Again, no one in Forrest Hills had heard from or had support from FEMA.

In the evening, we all adjourned to our cots, flatbeds, or trailers. I slept in the truck’s passenger seat while Bryson took the driver’s side. The back was so loaded with gear that both of us were nearly sitting upright.

As I tossed and turned trying fruitlessly to get comfortable, I couldn’t help but keep seeing one of the whiteboards that listed “inbound” supplies. The first three items listed were, “Food…2 Tesla Powerwalls…Body bags.” Corpse recovery was already a significant portion of their mission and would likely continue for some time.

By 7 AM the next morning, the first pallets of fresh provisions had arrived, and shortly after, the first helicopters were in the air. With most roads into the Asheville area inaccessible or damaged, airlifting supplies was the only option. Each helicopter had hard limits in terms of weight, range, and fuel that could be heavily impacted by visibility, precipitation, and wind. Additionally, aviation gasoline was in short supply. Therefore, Wilson and his team needed to plan every mission with absolute precision.

Each supply drop was crewed by only a pilot and a “mule” who unloaded the goods. Volunteers curated a selection of essential items, weighed them, and secured them on pallets. When a helicopter landed, they loaded the supplies on an ATV, drove them into the field, loaded up the helicopter, and then sent them out.

In the mountains of North Carolina, dedicated helipads are in short supply, so improvisation was critical. Abandoned parking lots were ideal, but open fields could suffice when necessary. In one case, a supply drop was made on a bridge, where a makeshift helipad was marked by pink neon tape put out by trapped North Carolinians desperately waiting for supplies.

Generous volunteers offered whatever they could to support the mission. In the early afternoon, a rancher drove up with his family and a dozen horses. They planned to load each horse with as many supplies as possible then lead them into the mountains of Chimney Rock and make deliveries as best they could. Locals with ATVs periodically showed up. They were similarly loaded up with supplies and sent off to find people in need.

While there was some variation in what each drop carried, the two most consistent items were bottled water and Starlink internet equipment. Elon Musk’s revolutionary satellite network was a critical component not only for operational effectiveness and logistics but also for locals with no other means to communicate. Musk donated dozens of Starlink routers and dishes to the recovery effort. The devices, retailing for $500, were given to locals for free. They were told that they owned them and all monthly fees were waived for the duration of the crisis.

At one point, a man showed up at the Harley dealership asking for help. An elderly family member who lived in the mountains had not checked in for two days. He was diabetic, and they were extremely concerned. A helicopter was tasked with flying into the mountains and locating the missing person, with Bryson serving as medic. Before he left, Bryson, the ever-prescient doc, asked one of the teams to provide insulin in case the man had slipped into diabetic shock. Thankfully, plenty was available, again not provided by any government agency but willfully donated by private citizens. The family had attempted to contact FEMA to no avail.

As the day went on, more helicopters landed, and more volunteers began to arrive. Ex-Air Force pararescue, MARSOC veterans, special forces combat medics, and a litany of other professionals took up the call and were tasked with delivering relief supplies.

Then, literally out of the blue, a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook landed in the grassy field behind the Harley-Davidson dealership. Almost 100 feet in length and 20 feet high, the twin-rotor beast dropped several pallets of supplies. I have no idea how these men tasked this Army workhorse to our mission. But they did.

As night drew near, aerial operations slowly ground to a halt. The helicopters volunteered for our mission were mostly recreational in nature and, therefore, did not have the advanced technology necessary to keep operations going at night.

Rumors and questions swirled about how and why FEMA seemed to be failing so spectacularly. Pilots saw multiple fires in the mountains and were told to avoid the smoke. Some rumors said that FEMA was bulldozing houses and burning them down without first attempting corpse retrieval. While I couldn’t confirm this rumor, and FEMA would likely deny it, pilots were told to avoid smoke lines for fear they carried “biohazards.” It is also true that when power is restored to houses that are heavily damaged by natural disasters, exposed wires on piles of wood can turn these homes into tinderboxes.

Other rumors abounded among some volunteers – and have been echoed online – that FEMA’s lackluster response is political in nature. The theory is that since the areas hardest hit by Helene are in deep red parts of Georgia and North Carolina, both swing states, slow-rolling the recovery will depress Republican turnout.

Again, there’s no hard evidence to support this theory. However, the perception certainly exists that the federal government has failed the people whose lives were devastated by the storm – not least because FEMA spent hundreds of millions of dollars housing illegal aliens and now says it has no money to help American citizens.

Other government failures have further complicated matters. When Biden did his “flyover” of the region, the Secret Service ordered the FAA to issue a Temporary Flight Restriction that grounded aerial supply drops and rescue missions across the affected area.

Regardless of the rumors, I can say the following with 100 percent certainty, based on what I witnessed and the testimonies I heard:

1. FEMA fundamentally failed to respond to this crisis in a timely manner, and that failure cost lives.
2. In that vacuum, countless volunteers have stepped up and displayed tremendous selflessness and bravery to help complete strangers.
3. The people of this region by and large feel completely abandoned by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

As political as the conversation around the government’s response to Helene has become, for those on the ground – both the victims of the storm and the volunteers there to help them – politics is an afterthought. Asheville is in Buncombe County, which has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 2008. The men and women leading this mission, meanwhile, were overwhelmingly conservative. Trump hats were not an uncommon sight.

Yet at no point did anyone ask whether they were being saved by a Republican or a Democrat, nor did anyone delivering water and food ask if the person they were helping was a liberal or conservative. It was just Americans, helping Americans.

No matter how divided the country appears through the corporate media lens, in this dark moment I saw a people united.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.