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Hurricane Helene response galvanizes U.S. helicopter community

By Ben Forrest | October 2, 2024

Estimated reading time 12 minutes, 7 seconds.

The washed-out rural landscape beneath the MD 500E helicopter was a jumbled stew of mud-colored water and what appeared to be boulders and debris, slithering through a forested pass near the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.  

In the aircraft’s left seat, pilot Garrett Mitchell scanned the aftermath of Hurricane Helene just a few miles east of the devastated city of Asheville, making his way toward an isolated area where a mother said she was stranded with her four-year-old child. 

“We are in a serious situation right now,” the mother wrote in a Facebook post Mitchell said was shared with him many times.  

“My child is almost out of formula, and we have a woman on oxygen here. We need to get out bad.”  

A Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater helicopter crew rescued a man and dog from a disabled and taking-on-water 36-foot sailing vessel 25 miles off Sanibel Island, Florida, on Sept. 26, 2024. U.S. Coast Guard photo, courtesy of Air Station Clearwater

After meeting with rescue workers on the ground, Mitchell launched toward a backyard landing zone (LZ), where he said he picked up the baby and parents and took them to safety. Garrett, an influencer better-known as the YouTuber Cleetus McFarland, filmed the rescue and shared it online; the child’s mother later confirmed the incident in an update to her post.  

“The true power of social media,” Mitchell wrote. “Let this be an example of a post that helped someone in need.”  

These kinds of stories flowed out in large numbers after the storm, captured and shared on social platforms and in traditional media.  

Private pilots banded together, supplementing the work of professional rescue and relief pilots from the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. National Guard to airlift citizens and deliver supplies.  

“It’s not just Asheville,” said Garrett in another post. “There is damage and unreachable communities all over.”  

A CH-47F Chinook transport helicopter from the 1st Battalion, 169th Aviation Regiment (General Support), Connecticut Army National Guard, flies over the runway of the Connecticut Army National Guard Army Aviation Support Facility. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Matthew Lucibello

Hurricane Helene has been called one of the worst storms in modern history, with at least 160 people dead and many more missing as of Tuesday evening. It destroyed homes and businesses, tore up roads and caused heavy floods that swept cars away like children’s toys. 

The storm was also a galvanizing event for the U.S. helicopter community, which rushed out to deliver water, diapers and other critical supplies in areas other vehicles couldn’t reach.  

On Monday, pilots from the volunteer group Operation Airdrop flew a reported 37 private helicopters to shore up relief and rescue efforts in North Carolina’s high country.  

“We just kind of organized a private helicopter army to go in and survey the damage and extract people and take supplies and create landing zones,” said volunteer pilot Matt McSwain in an interview with WCNC Charlotte. 

“We’ve had people from Texas to Maine, all the way to the East Coast just show up and [say], ‘How do we help?’ ”  

Garrett Mitchell and Greg Biffle, both private pilots, used their personal helicopters to help with the relief efforts. Garrett Mitchell/Facebook Photo

Operation Airdrop set up a war room to coordinate its ad hoc response, gathering calls for help from social media posts and other sources, triaging them and then trying to find the person in distress. The group also planned to deliver communications devices for first responders.  

“There’s whole communities that are completely cut off from the grid,” said McSwain on Monday. “We tried to establish communications with the local sheriff’s department, the fire department. There is no communications.” 

Operators also sought to raise money for fuel costs related to these efforts; local media pegged the bills at $60,000 per day.  

In addition to North and South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia were also heavily impacted by the storm.  

Greg Biffle, a Robinson R44 pilot and former NASCAR driver, posted several videos about using his aircraft to deliver supplies in response to the disaster. 

“The problem is, those mountain communities, all over, the roads are completely washed out, off the side of the mountain,” Biffle said in a video interview with NASCAR.com.  

“The roads don’t exist anymore, in or out … the scale of this is incredible.” 

Members of the Texas A&M Task Force 1 Search and Rescue Team work alongside Soldiers from the HHC 1-111th AVN GSAV (General Support Aviation) to conduct search and rescue operations after Hurricane Helene, Sept. 27, 2024. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Valeria M. Pete, 107th MPAD, FLARNG

Private helicopters from Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, both active NASCAR teams, also reportedly participated in the recovery.  

All of this followed the superlative work of professionals who braved oppressive winds and high seas to rescue people in need during and after the storm.  

As of Tuesday morning, the U.S. National Guard said it deployed 46 helicopters—a mixture of CH-47 Chinooks, UH-60 Black Hawks, HH-60 Pave Hawks and L/UH-72 Lakotas—across the region.  

More than 5,900 National Guard members from multiple states rescued hundreds of people and cleared roads across the Southeast in the storm’s wake, per a news release. 

“It’s pretty devastating to look at a lot of homes that have been wiped off the foundations and a lot of people that are probably going to be having to restart their lives pretty shortly,” said BGen Alex Harlamor of the Florida National Guard. 

In Tennessee, eight U.S. Army helicopters and 10 from the U.S. Navy were deployed to Fort Liberty, along with four rotary-wing search-and-rescue aircraft and pararescue teams, the Pentagon announced

‘Consuela’ rests on a road with scattered debris. Garrett Mitchell/Facebook Photo

The U.S. Coast Guard reported multiple rescues on X (formerly Twitter) during and after the storm, including a helicopter mission from Air Station Savannah that delivered nine people and a dog to safety. Coast Guard aircrews also assessed damage after the storm as part of coordinated efforts involving federal, state and local partners.  

In another viral video, pilot Garrett Mitchell stitched together clips of the devastation and his own relief work: Nature’s unassailable power, tempered with humanity’s best response.  

One commenter nominated him for president. 

“These areas we were flying in are some of the worst areas to fly a helicopter,” Mitchell said later in a YouTube video, standing next to his MD 500E (nickname: “Consuela”).  

“I’m talking about the tightest LZs, sloped landings … it was absolutely wild. Consuela performed absolutely flawless,” he said. 

“I had the ability to take insulin, food and water into the tightest spots in the area and drop them off and get them to people in need, and then haul people out. 

“Yeah, she got a little beat up. She got puked in. We hauled dogs, a lot of people, and it is what it is. It’s just a machine, but I’m so proud of this machine and what it’s become.” 

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1 Comment

  1. Please give legitimate Ways to fund the jet fuel for the civilian helicopters.

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