Transcript of #138 Aerial Recovery - The Hurricane Helene Disaster

Charlie Kiba, Jonathan Howard. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So you guys popped up on my radar. We've been getting blown up with messages wanting us to cover what's been going on with Hurricane Helene up in North Carolina and East Tennessee. And John, we saw your video go viral, and we got connected through to you, Charlie, through Mark Turner, who's a good friend of mine. And so there's been all kinds of rumors going on in the news. I don't think anybody really knows what to believe. I'm not really one to believe mainstream media anymore. But look, you guys have been on the ground there. And so I just want to I just want to cut right to the chase on what you guys are seeing down there. If any of these rumors are true about what we're hearing from other people on the ground as far as blocking aid and what's actually going on. And then I'd like to wrap it up with what's the solution and what do you guys need, and what can people do? And so I'm going to give you guys a Quick introduction here. Charlie Keybaugh, you are the Chief Development Officer at Ariel Recovery, which is a Nashville-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing comprehensive healing to veterans and first responders.

At Ariel Recovery, you empower these individuals with a new mission to respond to disasters and to combat human trafficking on a global scale. Ariel Recovery's mission is to save lives and to stop evil. Prior to aerial Recovery, you served in the Air Force Special Warfare for 10 years and was a JTAC for a second Rancher Battalion in the early days after 9/11. After leaving service in 2005, you established yourself as a business growth expert, helping two companies land on the prestigious Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the US five years in a row. You're the founder of the Vidar Group, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business service provider that provides training to classified operators of the MQ-9 reaper. Jonathan Howard, you are a Master Sergeant in the Florida State Guard Special Mission Unit, created by Governor DeSantis and are currently Currently, the Impact Operations Lead at Arial Recovery. You are also a former combat controller, CCT. In addition to your military service, you're a successful businessman. You have sold four real estate companies and own a title company across Florida. You are the principal broker for the entire state of Florida for Avante, a national vacation management brokerage.

You own a successful lawn care company and build luxury homes in Florida. Last but not least, your happiness and passion is for bird photography, and you sell all of your prints for military charity. You are both here today to share firsthand what you're seeing take place in North Carolina, and more specifically, what the media is not saying. Where do we start? How did you guys get involved in this?

We were actually in Florida when the storm hit. We pre-positioned in Tallahassee. Our organization linked up with John's Florida State Guard folks. We rode the storm out in a parking garage and then quickly moved into Perry, Florida, and then Steenhatchy.

What were you guys seeing there?

A pretty rundown. A town of not very well-built structures. So you know no one had the insurance. You know everything they is gone with that storm. We worked hand in hand with the local law enforcement. At one point, we were leapfrogging the firefighters to clear the road to get from Perry to Steenhatchy. It was a great operation down there in the fact that everybody worked very, very well together. Information was shared, resources were shared. We were working hand in hand with the officials there.

Was FEMA down there?

No, I think I heard they were going to come three days later or something like that. But down there, there was no red tape. For our unit, the SMU, that was actually our very first mission to be activated on. Desantis and all the floor leadership were like, We don't really know what you guys do as operators. Just do whatever you do. And that's what we did. We have a great commander and former pararescue guy. And he was like, We're going to go do what others can't do, and we're going to find work and get after it. So the main mission to get down there was just clear and I think my team alone, we cleared about 46 miles of road in about five-hour period, just chainsaws, just pushing through to Perry. And then we basically hit multiple roads, linked up with area recovery. I should say this was actually the first time me and Charlie actually met in person and work together. No kidding. We knew each other. We talked on the phone and stuff. We live in the same area. We're always trying to link up together, but we're just busy. Our teams worked together, and then we just started pushing in.

Not as bad as what we have seen in North Carolina, just because of our response with the state of Florida and the resources. No one was trying to take command and control because we had command and control established. So no one was fighting for it. So law enforcement, Coast Guard, everyone knew their role. No one was like, I'm the leader here. And we were able all to work together. And even with Ariel, we were able to work with them and just put the boats in the water and go look for people because the water level in Stein hatch was high. When we got there at first light, it was probably what? At least chest deep in most places of water. So we were either going out by foot or we're going by boat. But you can see the water line on some of these houses. It was like 11 feet. It was really, really high.

And the National Guard folks were there. They were. Absolutely. And God bless them, they're doing their best. They're just not trained. They're not trained, they're not equipped. So we actually had to pull one of their LMTVs out of the floodwaters.

Wow.

With a Chevy.

Yeah. They had no equipment. They're there doing their best, but ill-prepared for that type of response.

Is the Special Missions Unit, is that a new- Brand new. That's brand new. When did that get established?

This year. January? Pretty much this year. They started the State Guard about two years ago. And then DeSantis, Governor DeSantis basically won his own JASOC unit for the state. And then we did the first selection class last October, and then the last class was in wearing. So it literally just got put together. Interesting. We were actually doing our weapon qualifications the week of the hurricane. So we were rushing all of our weapons qualifications. That way we could carry in the state and get deputized. And then as we were doing that, we were mission prepping for the hurricane. And that was our very first mission to show our capabilities, which was great because we were able to do that.

So is this all comprised of special operations guys or former military?

Yeah, all former operators or very unique backgrounds like canine handlers, stuff like that. We have one guy who is a fire captain, so he comes in very handy for what we're doing, emergency missions. He's also built like a Viking, so his physical capabilities is great. But pretty much everyone is either former Seals, Green Berets, Rangers, rescue or combat controllers, EOD as well.

Man, I hope we stand that up here in Tennessee.

Yeah. I think most states are going to follow what we're doing. It's great. We even have our own fixed wing, Rotary wing. Desantis is just full-blown with it.

Interesting. We'll have to reach out to Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee. So what got you guys up north from Florida? How did you wind up in North Carolina?

So John shared his position with me on his cell phone, which was a mistake. All right, so now I'm tracking him. So I saw that he had made his way home, and our team heard about the devastation happening in North Carolina, and we set a team up there. So I reached out to John. I said, Hey, if you're home, let's roll up there. And so He said, Let's do it. We jumped in his private plane, flew up to Rutherford County Airport, and landed there, and just did the soft thing once we got there, which was, Let's try to figure out our next move and get creative. We started knocking on the doors of the helicopters as they landed. Hey, let's go do some rescues. Hey, let's go do some work. No kidding.

So you guys literally just flew out here with the plant, or you guys just flew out here with the plant. You guys both flew out here with the plant of just, Hey, let's just get on the ground, figure it out.

As we were driving to the airport to get in the plane, I got a text from our commander, and they're like, Hey, we're being activated from North Carolina. And I was like, No kidding. I'm going there right now with area recovery. So they're like, Perfect. Go there, get intel. Because there wasn't really any intel. Nothing was being shared. It seemed like no one really knew what was going on. It just people were trapped, and mudslides, and flood. So as you said, once we landed in Rutherford, we would just go up to helicopters and we'd be like, Hey, can we get some work in with you? We just need to get in there and see what's going on. And that's how we... My wife actually said it when we were at dinner that night, but I think an angel actually put us in contact with this guy that had the helicopter because we were there trying to find helicopters, and this random guy came up to us, started talking to us that no one knew and no one has ever seen again and just completely vanished from the Earth. But he went up to this guy that owned the helicopter.

He was like, Hey, I got these two guys over here. They need to get a ride in and start doing some work. And then he came over to us and was like, Hey, I heard you guys need a helicopter ride. And this guy, now he's our best friend. He's amazing. He had his own private Bell 407 helicopter, which holds seven people. And he was like, Yeah, I can take you guys up. And that's what we did all of our work in the entire week. No kidding. He paid all that pocket. I mean, he was paying for the private pilot to fly it. He was paying for all the fuel out of pocket. I think he was spending seven to $9,000 a day. Wow. Yeah, just like in fuel on the pilot.

Wow. Zeb Hadley, National Coatings, out of Wilmington, North Carolina. And Mark Roseman was our pilot.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Without those two, we couldn't have done what we did.

So I saw a video of you, I I believe it went viral about some of the frustrations you were seeing on the ground. And it sounded like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounded like different government organizations were trying to take credit for saving an 11-day-old baby that you, gentlemen, actually saved. I'm going to play that video right now, overlay it on the episode.

I really don't want to make this video, but it is literally a matter of Life and Death for the People of North Carolina. My name is Jonathan Howard. I'm a member of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit, and I'm also up here with Arial Recovery, a nonprofit. I came up here on Sunday with Arial Recovery before we even got activated. We flew up here, and then we got activated, which is great. I have my team up here working as well. Here's the problem. I'm going to tell you everything that's happening from the ground, what I'm actually seeing, because what they're telling you is complete bullshit on the news, and these politicians don't have a fucking clue, and they're lying. I'll say this now. I'll say it at the end of the video. The only thing I need from this video is helicopters. If I have helicopters, I can save lives. Without helicopters, I can't reach these people. It doesn't matter how many chainsaws and trucks I got. I can't get to them. They're 10 miles in, 20 miles, 40 miles in the mountains. There's no way to get with them or even communicate with them.

I am literally flying around in a civilian helicopter looking for SOS messages carved in the mud or p on the ground, and we're dropping down and saving them. What got me fired up about this was yesterday, me and my team did the rescue of that 11-day-year-old baby. All these government officials and social media, they're showing that video that pictures and video of that rescue and claiming that they have some government help with that. Even USA Today wrote an article about it saying it was a Florida National Guard that went and got it with a helicopter.

No, it was me, my buddy Charlie, and a civilian named Zeb with his own personal helicopter at a Wilmington, North Carolina.

Without that civilian, that baby would be dead. The old lady we went and rescued after that, she'd be dead, too, because she had one day left of oxygen. No one was going to go get them. I will tell you, when we go up in the air, I probably see 40 civilian helicopters, and I might see two Blackhawks, National Guard, military, whatever they are. That's it. No one's out there doing rescues. I have my entire team up here from Florida right now, and they have no ability to go rescue these people other than what they can drive to. The people that are in dire need, they're out in the mountains. They are completely cut off. Now, I will say, I spoke to my congresswoman down in Florida, and she's a badass, and she made a bunch of phone calls, and now we got two contracted '60s coming up here tomorrow, which is great. I love that, but I still don't understand why we don't have more helicopters. We'll get a lot of work done with that, but there's no military.

No one's doing nothing.

It blows my mind. They're not even allowing people to see what's really going on. One of our friends yesterday, they were actually escorting CNN down a late war, and they wouldn't even let CNN, the Sheriff Department, would not let them go videotape the bad areas, how destructive it is. I don't know why they don't want to show you all that, but it is bad. I should also say When I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in, the Sheriff Department. It was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was a speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in and trying to to kick us out, which I have clarified today with North Carolina politicians that reached out to me, good on them, and they were like, That's complete bullshit. Speaker of the House has nothing. He wants you guys there. But this is the political BS that is happening here right now. Everyone's trying to be in charge without taking any type of action. Nobody wants to coordinate with anybody. Everybody wants to pretend like they're being the hero while these people are literally fucking dying in the mountains.

Like I'm saying, these people are limited in medication, they're running out of oxygen, and there's no one going to get them. The most effective way I have found to go find these people is by getting in a helicopter and flying down the rivers and roads and looking for SOS messages or people waving us down. Then we drop down and get them. We have all these people here. We have law enforcement, we have State Guard, National Guard. They have no way to go get these people. Yesterday, when I was at the Asheville airport refueling, which, by the way, the civilian is paying all this out of his own pocket. He's not even looking for a reimbursement. I think We did four refuelings yesterday, and that was just in half a day's work. We're in Nashville, and I saw two Air Force helicopter '60s, and I knew there were PJs just looking at them. I went up to them like, Hey, guys, what are you all doing? I'm like, This is what you need to be doing. This is how I'm finding people. They're like, We can't go. We're waiting on Title X orders. I'm like, What?

They can't get any authority. There's military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can't do nothing. Even my JASOC boys in Fayetteville They can't get orders to come out here. It is just the most disgusting thing, and they're killing these people. I don't know why they're doing it. I don't know what conspiracy. I've heard so many things, whatever you want to come up with, but they are literally allowing these people to fucking die in the mountains right now because we can't get helicopters. They got money for everything else in the fucking world right now, but if they could just get us helicopters, we could fly out there and rescue these people. I hope this video goes viral. I hope these politicians get fired. I hope people get pissed off. They'll probably kick me out of the state of North Carolina for doing this.

But you know what?

I don't care because if I can save one more life for it, it's fucking worth it to me.

Yeah. So who got that mission?

So we got that lead from Save Our Allies. That's right. Okay. I'm sure you're familiar with those guys.

Yeah, that's Chad Robichoff's guy. That's right.

So we're in contact with those guys. Sean actually sent us the mission from Save Our Allies, and it actually said a one-year-old baby, life or death situation. So we jumped in the helicopter. We were in Rutherford County Airport, which is about 15 minutes away. The notice had the phone number on it. So I was able to call the grandma, Lisa, get her on the phone, find out if the request was still active, because by this time, we'd already been on multiple missions that were dry holes. And so spoke to Lisa on the phone. She gave us the situation. Meanwhile, John's calling his counterparts on the ground, was able to get a PJ there within about five minutes. So again, you talk about the God moment of the angel connecting us there at the airport. His team just happened to be- The same town. In the same town at the same time, five minutes away.

Everything worked out the way it should have. Actually, they were flying in with the helicopter to come grab me and him at the Rutherford Airport. And the people that run the airport, awesome. I forgot the dad's name, but- Devon. Devon and his son, Tristan. His son is 13. He's been helping us out so much. His dad was in the fuel truck, and I wanted to hot refuel the helicopter because Like I said, the message we got, it said, Life or death. And so that was basically all the intel we had on it. So I asked his son, Tristan, I was like, Hey, can you radio your dad? Can you do a hot refuel? He was like, I don't think he's allowed to, but let me see. So his dad came over and he was like, Yeah, we can't hot refuel. That's not allowed to do it. And I was like, I have to get this helicopter hot refueled. And he was like, What's the situation? I was like, This one-year-old baby is going to die. And he was done. And he literally just backed up this field truck and just started refueling the helicopter. Me and Charlie got in it as I was coordinating with my PJ Paul on the ground.

And then I sent him the address, and then two minutes later, he's calling me. He's like, I'm here. I was like, How are you there that quick? He was like, I was here literally in the neighborhood, just randomly, which on the map, when we were looking at it, all the roads were cut off to it. The updated maps were saying it was completely just cut from the rivers. I don't know how he was even there, but he was able to stabilize the baby, get on oxygen, and just getting the vital stable. As we're flying in, the State Guard SMU guys were there. The PJ started making a HLZ. We found a field. I'm looking at imagery on my phone. We can land there, but there's power lines all around. As we're coming in there, Mark Roseman, our awesome pilot, this isn't what he does. Heize golf streams around the world. And he's putting down the field for the very first time in the middle of the field.

You have a fixed wing pilot flying a rotary wing aircraft. He's also a rower. He's a rower.

He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. He's a rower. This guy had, I think he said, over 22,000 flight hours. Wow. So very, very, very experience. And he's been flying helicopters all over. But he's not used to doing a 160th mission. He's not dropping down in the fields and landing on the rooftop. So he dropped down in the fields and landing on the rooftop. So so We had a bunch of our SMU guys there with the baby. My buddy Byron come run out with the little, I forgot, baby crib or holder, oxygen. Car seat. Car seat, yeah. And we basically just loaded them into the helicopter, took took off, and we flew right to Mission Hospital in Asheville.

At the same time, we had to communicate with the hospitals, let them know we were coming. We found the radio frequency. Our aircraft radio was not compatible, so we had a guy from the rear on our team actually make a phone call to the hospital, let them know that we were coming, have the doctors and nurses on standby on the rooftop waiting for us.

So as we were coming to that rooftop, Mark was like, Find me a place on the ground. I was spot in the front seat looking for an HLZ. And there was two helicopters parked in the HLZ, so we couldn't land on the ground. There was one on top of the roof. And it was a little bit windy. I'd say it was very windy, a little bit of rain. And he was like, Mark, the only place he can go is on that roof. I was like, It's pretty big. You should be able to put it down. He goes, I've never landed on a roof. I was looking at the windsock up there, and it was a direct crosswind, and that crosswind was the top of the building for the hospital. He was nervous about it. I was like, You just got to get it down. As we were coming in, about 10 feet above the winds were just like... I mean, it was pushing us. It was real, real strong. But he got down. Me and Charlie hopped out with the baby, grandma and mom, rushed him inside, and they had a full staff there. I mean, they had probably, I think, two doctors, three nurses.

Nice. And they just grabbed that baby and took it. And then we actually went immediately out to another mission. But a few days later, they got a hold to Charlie. They sent us photos of the baby and the mom, and so the baby was alive. And then at some point, we're going to go visit them and just follow up with them and stuff.

Man, that's That's amazing.

Yeah. I'm not a very big emotional guy, but my emotions were running very high in that mission. And then once we actually got that baby in that doctor's hand, I actually wanted to cry. It was hard to describe, but I don't know. He was just tugging on my heart.

Man, you guys are fucking awesome.

Yeah. At the time, we didn't know it, but it was an 11-day-year-old premature baby with riddle bone disease, low iron, Aaron and something else that it had already been diagnosed with.

Do you know the baby's name? Mason. Mason. Yeah. Man. I love hearing that, man. You guys are a godsend. What government organizations are taking credit for your guys's work?

It was some... Again, the daily updates that the guard folks were putting out, because I actually reached out to the author of the article in USA Today. You write something bad, I will hunt you down and send you a nasty email.

I learned that from my mom. They were saying it was like North Carolina National Guard. Not trying to discredit them. Those guys are doing their part. But in the video, you can clearly see it's a red and gold helicopter. It's a Bell helicopter. It's not a National Guard. And they're like, oh, National Guard saves 11-day-year-old premature baby. And I saw it being spread all over social media. I was just like, you are disgusting. Like, literally, these people are out here dying. I should say, right after that 11-day-year-old baby, we went and saved an elderly lady who had a day left to live on oxygen. She was cut off in the middle of nowhere. We're the first people to reach them. How is everybody getting in touch with you guys?

Because everything we're hearing is there's no communications, there's no Starlink, there's no nothing.

Facebook, messages direct to people like ourselves.

That particular one, the son, who was probably in his early 30s, hiked over the mountain to check on his family.

Five miles.

Then went back to get a cell phone signal to put out a request. And so all it was, was Bent Creek. I think there was an address.

I think there was a grid or an address. It just said people here need help.

And so we just flew into that area, found the river, followed the river, looked for houses, and then spotted in the mud and on the road, SOS.

That's how you guys are identifying.

The cloud layer was pretty low. It was a little bit foggy, a little bit rainy. And we're looking, and all the roads to this I'm going to say it was probably 10 miles in. We're just completely washed away, just completely eroded. So there's no way to get in there.

I mean, can you even tell there is a road? There was a road.

You can see places, there's remnants of it. There might be a little bit of it here, but it's all washed away. And as we were flying over. I actually didn't see it the first time. And then I caught my eye. I saw big white letters painted on the road that was washed out. It said SOS. And then probably 30 yards away from that, it was carved in the mud, probably about foot-wide SOS. So I was like, Hey, Mark, let's go down there. But it was like on a valley, the road was washed out. I'm trying to find a HLZ. We actually didn't see it when we were coming in, but we crossed two power lines that we almost hit on the way out. But we literally dropped in basically on this little small piece of concrete next to a house in a hill and a washed out road, which we couldn't land there because we were afraid it would collapse into the river. Then we shut down, got out, started talking to him. That's usually how we get our intel. We start talking to him, Hey, what's going on? Who needs help? They're Oh, this guy's low on insulin.

But there was a lady there, and she only had about enough fuel in her generator to run her oxygen machine for about a day left.

And they said she won't leave. She's not going to leave.

Wow.

Because her whole family was there. Emotions are high. When they first see you, and we're the first people to reach them, I think that was day four, they're just like, you can see the color come back to their face. But everyone we kept running into, like them, they didn't want to leave because they thought the government would be there in a week. So they're like, oh, everything's going to be okay in a couple of days, right? It's day four already. I'm like, you all don't know how bad this is because they're thinking it's just their river that's washed out, not the entire North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia. And we've shown videos, and they're just like, Oh, I'm like, You're probably not going to have a road for two to four months. That would change their opinion on them wanting to leave. But that lady, yeah, I go back to her. Low oxygen, about a day left. We convinced her to get in the helicopter because we could take her son who hiked over the mountains with his daughter as well. And then we flew him out. But I mean, again, great. If it wasn't for Mark, we wouldn't have been able to do that or Zeeb.

But as we were taken off, Mark, he was basically like, oh, God, he just yanked the power up. And there was a power line right in front of us. We didn't even see it. And then I was like, okay, I'm looking out. And then there was another one right in front of that. So that was a big eye opener. Like, okay, we really got to be switched on here because this is not a normal HLZ landing. And then Even as we landed to bring them back to their house, we had to land on a slope like this, which is something he's never done before. And we actually had some issues on that one as well. We actually thought we put the tail in the dirt because it started vibrating real hard. And we were just like, Oh, man, we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere. But it was just the way the angle was, and it was fine. But then we had to go back and grab them because we couldn't carry all the weight. But that's literally the situations that were going on. Oh, sorry.

We actually went and checked on that area about three days later. Yeah. Really? Because we had to leave the husband of the woman. He wanted to stay and prepare the house to prevent mold. We came back in and checked on them a couple of days later. You could start to see the signs of the community turning on themselves.

Is so looting is starting to happen, that stuff? Desperation.

Yeah. Yeah. Trying to control the food.

Fighting for resources. You could How did that happen then? You could smell the death in that site pretty strongly as well.

You can smell the death out there and stuff, because the log piles are just... There's so many. It just washed up in the rivers. They would tell us, Yeah, people are in there. We have eight people missing from the community. We know they're in there. You can smell it.

You can smell the bodies.

But to go back to your original question on that, so we did that baby rescue, we did that elderly lady, and then I started seeing those videos going out. It was the next day, day three. And that's why we were told as our unit, we were going to have support helicopters. Actually, I was told I was going to have nine helicopters, like Fortune nukes, 360s, 272s. And we're supposed to have all the support for our unit to go out there, and we weren't getting that. Then just talking to everybody else, they weren't getting it. We were basically told, You can get a helicopter if it's life or death. I'm just like, Well, we can't go rescue these people. They're literally a day left of oxygen. They're going to die. I I was getting just super frustrated because I had actually coordinated a 140-person evacuation the next day out of this nursing home, and I had no helicopters to do it.

Who is they that's telling you it has to be life or death?

It was coming I'm like our liaison officer of North Carolina. I don't know exactly who it was, but- Some government official? Yeah, some government official coming down through our commander. I obviously completely jumped the chain of command, but I don't wait around for things to happen. I was super I actually got off the phone with my title business partner, who's an attorney, Jim Boatman. I go to him for a lot of wisdom. He's a very good godly man. He's a little bit older than me. If I need something, he's usually the one to tell me, Don't say those things. Watch what you're saying. Don't curse. Things like that. And he's like, You got to make a video, John. He's like, You got to do it. He was like, If these people are really like, It's life or death, he's like, Make a video and post it. I was like, All right. I literally went out there to where our HLZ was, and I made that video pretty angrily. I was disgusted with what I was seeing. I was mad that they weren't giving us support. They're pretending everyone there is getting support. But then when the 11-day baby premature video comes out of us rescuing it, They're like, Look at us.

We're doing everything we can. Now they're trying to pretend like they're helping and like, oh, it was the National Guard that did this. I was just like, you all have time to post on social media about what we're doing. But literally, if it wasn't for that civilian with his helicopter, that baby was dead. That old lady was dead. And that's when I made that video. I was like, you know what? Whatever is going to happen to me is going to happen to me. You guys want to kick me out of North Carolina, whatever. I even thought I was going to get a lot of backlash on that from my leadership. But they were just like, that needed to happen because we just weren't getting the support that we needed. I can't tell you how much... When I made that video that day and posted it, from the very next day, I think I probably had access to about 15 helicopters. We had congresspeople reaching out to us, texting us at 12:30 at night. I had all these feelings like, I'm bringing 18 wheelers of truckload supplies. Just night and day difference. Even just people within the area of North Carolina, Charlotte, Wilmington, they're just like, I cannot believe what's going on.

We thought it was being handled. And they just started rushing up there. So the people that were actually living there, they started thanking us. Thank you for that video. And we were just like, we didn't realize how big of a deal it was going to be.

And we ran into so many people on those HLZs that were there helping. And they said, We're here helping because we saw what you guys are doing. We saw John's video. We saw all the things that you guys are doing and the impact you're having. So we dropped what we had and came up here to help.

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And then also from that video, I started getting a lot of messages to my Instagram from my actual aircraft commanders, squadron commanders. No kidding. I had a squadron commander from North Carolina reach out to me. They had to load a C-17 full of supplies just to take a photo off for Kamala, and they never sent the bird. Wait a minute. What? They loaded an entire C-17 full of supplies for the hurricane victims just for Kamala to go there, take a photo, take a video, and they never sent the C-17. It was just a four. Are you serious? That was a National Guard North Carolina National Guard Unit. That was the '06 that reached out to me. And then I had another-He reached out to you to tell you that they did a photo op with the intention of never sending the aid. Never sending. It was just a photo op. The day Joe Biden flew in to Asheville, they had to put up another temporary flight restriction over the entire airspace there. There wasn't an exact time. It just said from, I think, 11:00 to 4:00 PM or something. And it wind up being, I think, from 11:30 to about 3:30 or something.

But by him coming there, he actually never landed. He just flew around viewing. But because of that TFR, all rescues were shut down. We couldn't go do That was the very first day we had no fog, no clouds, no rain. We were like, Oh, we're going to go get all these rescues in. This was still earlier in the week. I think it was Wednesday, when people were still very, very desperate. I ran to a senator from North Carolina the day before at the Asheville Airport, and he was telling me about it. He was like, We're trying to stop him from coming here. They were telling him, If he come here, they're not going to be able to do their job.

Can you tell me what senator?

I don't remember his name. I don't remember his name at all. Okay. He was just an old. He was an older guy. I know I was told he was a Republican, had no idea who he was. But he was like, We're trying to stop him from coming here so it doesn't slow down rescue operations, because at this point, it was still life or death. But he came anyways, shut us down. And me and him were literally just sitting there with our helicopter right in front of us for three, three and a half hours, and we couldn't go do one mission during that time. And then by the time we got done, I think we only got maybe two missions in before it got dark. But that's the political nonsense that was happening. And then I think the next day we had fog again.

Did anything come of the President flying over?

Well, he didn't even remember that he flew over.

Yeah, he didn't even remember.

What do you mean? He got interviewed after he landed, and they said, Mr. President, what do the people in the storm state need? And his response was, What storm? Or he said, I'm trying to remember what storm you're talking about.

Are you serious?

And then he said, Oh, they have everything they need. We're very happy.

They have everything they need.

Quote, word for word.

It's all over the media right now. It's everywhere. But it was just- We'll pull that clip and insert it as well. Yeah, but it was just the nonsense where it was like all crews just got shut down. What are the states in the storm zone need, Mr. President?

What do the states in the storm zone? What do they need after what you saw today? Oh, the storm Yes, sir.

He was stronger than I thought he was.

He does everything they need. We're very happy.

It's just a non-functioning government, just like we just said. Secret services and functioning the borders and function functioning. Chinese are coming in. There's a fentanyl crisis. The outrageous spending. The only thing that seems to be functioning in this country is the IRS, and hopefully that changes soon.

That's the stuff that was happening. I had another, it was a Coast Guard squadron commander of a Seahawk unit, a Black Hawk. I can't remember if it was South Carolina or North Carolina. He's like, I had been requesting to go there every day. I get denied. They I didn't send them.

Why aren't they sending the 8?

All my J-Sawk buddies, all my boys at the 2-4, PJs, all that, they're literally right there in Fayetteville. They could not get authorisation to come. They'd be messaged me like, Dude, we want to come. My old unit, 2-3, they wanted to come. Just nonsense.

What's frustrating is we just fought a 20-year war in Afghanistan. We have the people, we have the equipment, we have the experience to get things and resources into hard places. Every military crew that we saw, we would ask them, Do you have a slingload kit? No slingload kit. I think we heard of one slingload operation.

No slingload kit? No.

There's two nukes there. There's two nukes there. Yeah. And they're not doing it.

So if you have the people, the equipment, the experience to go do it, why aren't you doing it? Because someone has to make that decision.

Tell them what the guy told us yesterday from Fort Bragg.

Yeah. So we ran into a 82nd airborne guy, and we were excited. We were like, Oh, the 82nd is finally here. This is awesome. What are you doing? And he at first was very standoffish. And then we built some rapport with the guy.

Well, we told him, hey, CCT, TAPP here. He said, okay, We relax.

And he goes, We're just here flying 06s around.

Are you serious? Their only mission the entire week is to fly colonels and VIPs around, because that's why they didn't have sling low capability. They literally took it off.

And Zeb's helicopter helicopter was used to fly county officials over their county to do a damage assessment multiple times. Yeah.

The Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, he has a relationship with Zheb, the owner of the aircraft, and he would be texting him to go do missions. And I remember, I think it was day two, I was like, why is the Lieutenant Governor, the second highest powerful guy, having you as a civilian, fly officials around? And he was like, he can't get any support. He has no authority to do anything because the governor of North Carolina won't do anything. Apparently, he said he was AWAL for three days. I think that was maybe Wednesday or something like that. But you know it's bad when the second highest powerful guy in North Carolina came and get his own helicopter to fly people around.

Let's Let's put a pause on the failed government for a minute and talk about what you guys are seeing. So we will dive back into that. From what we're hearing over here, there are entire villages and towns just completely- Yeah. Got off. Cut off. As in they never existed. Is that- This is a storm that...

This has never happened before. In Florida, when we get a storm, The water rises equally, and then it goes away. In the mountains, it goes where it goes. The people who make the roads evidently follow that same plan because the roads are right next to the rivers. As the rivers rise and the water starts flowing and a bridge gets washed out, that bridge hits the next bridge. Now you have two bridges floating down the river. They hit the next bridge. You have this big snowball effect of debris taking out all the roads. What do we say that that one river was supposed to be six inches wide, and now it's 60 meters wide?

It was outside Marion, the county survey guy. He said that that river originally was only 6 inches deep and about a foot wide. Then when we flew over it, I think it was probably at least 60 meters wide. So all the houses that were near there literally just got completely demolished and flush because it was like a mudslide and just the river overflowed. So this whole area was cleared, about 60 meters wide. Vehicles just tumbled into it. I think he told us at that location, about 15 deaths. At that one location, about 15 people were killed there.

And so if the roads are gone, and these people think when the power goes out, it'll be back on in a week tops, right? But the roads are gone.

Yeah.

And it doesn't... You can't build a road overnight. It's going to take months and months and months.

And a bridge is even longer. Right.

Yeah. I mean, so the lady with the no auction that we went to our rescue, on the way over there, we've passed four bridges that were just completely demolished. Four bridges, big concrete bridges just gone.

So any logical thinker would see that scenario and go, we need helicopters or pack mules, right? I mean, that's the only way to do it. Yeah. And so you have all these supplies coming in to distribution points, and then the people that can drive to those distribution points get what they need And that's great. But you can't get those resources out to the hilltops without helicopters. And in most places, you can't land. So you have to lower things down, which is why we're asking about the sling loads. So there's There's just no plan. That's the bottom line.

How many people have you guys saved?

Do you know or rescued?

The first three or four days, we had We picked up a lot of people.

The two that really stand out to me was just the baby because those were just actual life or death. But we picked up a lot of people. I can't remember how many, but it was a lot.

Do you have an estimation? 150?

No, we didn't do that many. No, we didn't do that many. I'd probably say a good 10, 15. Yeah, 10 or 15. Ten or 15 people like that. Because we can only get, to give you an idea, we can only do about one mission every hour and a half to two hours. Wow. Because of wait and fuel. Yeah. So we would fly out 20 to 30 minutes, land there, rescue them, fly them back to where they needed to go, and we have to go refuel, get the next mission. So at that point, it's usually about two hours.

What about when you guys started getting more access to helicopters?

That's when we started spreading them everywhere, and then they were able to go. I don't know what each person did, but they were able to go do a lot of rescues.

So you guys aren't even keeping track. You're just 100% go. There's no time, 24 hours a day.

There was no downtime. And the service is so bad. The only time I'd ever even get service was just when we were up in the air for a little bit for a few minutes here and there, and then we were back on the ground. We hit the ground, we refuel, we grab a mission, and we just go. And then we would do that basically from about... We usually couldn't get started till about 9:30 because of fog. So about 9:30, we would go, and then we usually had to stop about 6:30. So it would just be go, go, go that entire time. And we would just grab food when we could. We'd grab food and fuel where we could and just make it happen.

So it was either personal recovery or food and water delivery?

Medicine. A lot of medicine. Starlink. Starlink. Starlink started at the end of the week. Generating the fuel. Yeah, mainly. So it started basically with personnel recovery the first couple of days. And then it seemed probably around maybe Thursday, the personnel recovery slowed down. Everyone basically got out that needed to get out. And then it went more to insulin, medical supplies, EpiPins. And then once we got a pretty good hold of that, it went more to Starlink. That way they could just message us and be like, We have an emergency. This person needs this. Even the firefighters, we did a lot of firefighter drops. So we would actually, in a civilian helicopter be picking up searching rescue crews, mainly firefighters, and flying them to their locations because they couldn't get any helicopter support. So we would be doing that.

We have these states that got paid to send task forces to help, we were picking them up and moving them to different locations.

I actually posted a video. We had two civilian helicopters. We landed them in the field to pick up, I think it was eight firefighters. And these are big old boys. So we had to really balance the weight. But that's what I'm saying. People are like, why are you guys there? You don't need to be there. There's military, there's government. And I'm like, then why are we doing these missions? If there wasn't a need for us, we wouldn't be doing these missions. So, yeah, we were moving a lot of people, county officials, state officials, search and recovery crews. We'd even drop our... We take our search and recovery guys from Ariel with a bunch of chainsaws and literally fly them to the top of a mountain, drop them off, and have them work their way down, just go and look in and clearing.

How are you guys delivering fuel for the chainsaws? And all that stuff. Helicop. Helicop. Yeah.

We literally load the helicopter up. A little sketchy sometimes, carrying propane tanks inside the helicopter and stuff like that, highly flammable. But we would load up five, six propane tanks and then just go up there and drop it off to people. Damn.

Do you have any estimation of how many people are in distress?

Somebody should. Not you guys? I doubt anybody does.

Thousands. I mean, a lot of these people are just... It's so remote. Like I said, the road might be washed out for 10 to 20 miles. And the terrain is impassable really, even by foot or even by pack meal, because it's just so steep and so wooded. You're only getting there by helicopter. I mean, it's just, yeah, there's a lot of people. And that's just in the area of Western North Carolina, where we are. I know it's even more widespread than that.

Have you guys done anything in Tennessee?

No, not there.

Not for this storm yet.

What Where are you guys getting the Starlink from?

Donated. So we work a lot with Global Empowerment Mission. It's a global nonprofit, and they had a lot donated. And then we would take their supplies that were donated to them and then go deploy them out into the field.

How long... We talk about when desperation kicks in a lot on the show, and it's really hard for people to fathom what that's like when the community starts looking inward. But that's what happens when people get desperate, starve. They're starving, they're dying of thirst, they don't have medicine. I mean, you guys know all this stuff. A lot of people don't. But what are some of the things you started noticing? When did that start happening?

That was about day two or three. That was about Thursday. We went back into Bent Creek.

Bent Creek.

They would come up to us individually and say, Hey, I don't trust that guy over there.

Yeah, they really would. They was getting where they'd be like, Watch that guy. He's shit.

That guy over there by your helicopter. Keep an eye on him. I look over and he's grabbing the prop, the rotor blade, pulling on it. I'm like, Don't touch the helicopter, bro.

Are they stealing each other's supplies or anything like that? Is anything like that happening?

They were saying that. I know when we tried to offload that day, the helicopter, as we started unloading, this lady and her boyfriend just came out of nowhere, and they were trying to control the supplies for the whole community. And we're like, No, everyone's getting their fair share of this. But they were trying to do a lot of control, stuff like that. They even told us that there was actually a bunch of illegal immigrants living there in the mountains, and they would come out at night time and steal their stuff. One of them said that they surrounded... This was somewhere out there, but a guy hiked in to be with his family. He said, where he was, they were actually surrounding cars at night time with guns and taking people's stuff and then just leaving.

Damn. Are you seeing communities stand together at all?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. They're being very protective. Most people out there, especially in the rural places, they were all very open and carrying.

So a lot of them are supporting each other. Oh, yeah.

And that's what needs to happen. You can sit at home and wait for the government to show up all you want and the military to show up all you want. They're probably not going to. And so these towns and these families, they should all have contingency plans. The government's bad at business. They're just not good at business. They don't protect their resources. They don't use their resources. We know the power grid is vulnerable. Have you been to a power station? Oh, yeah. You could just drive to it right now and chuck rocks at it.

Yeah, they're not guarded by a chain link fence. Right.

So you've got a government that's bad of business, doesn't protect their resources, doesn't use the resources they have. Why on earth would think that they're going to come save you?

I've been talking about it for a long time. We don't have a functioning government right now. We have a border that's wide open. We have runaway money going to every other country out there except ours. It sounds very similar to the situation in Hawaii not too long ago. It doesn't sound like these people are getting aid. I mean, MBC actually put an article out saying that this is all a big conspiracy theory. So Somebody on my team sent this to me, but this is part of the article. Fema Administrator Deanne Criswell told ABC News this week on Sunday that the agency absolutely has all the resources it needs and that claims that the agency has been delivering funds to migrants are just plain false. Here's ABC news. Mayorkas warms FEMA, doesn't have enough funding to last through the hurricane season. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says, The agency tasked with helping communities recover from Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters does not have enough money to make it through hurricane season. So once again, mainstream media is contradicting itself and likely is completely full of shit.

So FEMA is running out of money?

That's what- So this is it. Well, according to the Secretary of FEMA, they're not running out of money. But Mayorkas is saying they're running out of money, both with the federal government. Who the fuck are we supposed to believe here?

It's like anything. You have money for what you prioritize.

And then that's another reason why I wanted to bring you guys in is because, yeah, great. Thank you, MBC. Do you have anybody on the fucking ground over there? Probably not. Cool. Are there any government officials on the ground over there? Probably. It sounds like they're all flying around in fucking helicopters, getting little photosheets. I'm getting fucking pissed just talking about it. But- You should make a video and go viral. Well, that's what we're doing right now. There you go. But there are there have been reports that FEMA is blocking aid and blocking supplies. Do you think... I don't want to just jump on the bandwagon. Do you think there's any... Do you think they might be, if they are blocking aid and supplies, do you think that there's a bigger plan, and maybe they just don't want people looting. I know on the last hurricane down in, was it last year when Sanibel, Fort Myers got hit? I know they were keeping people from This is for Mark Turner. They were keeping people from going to Sanibel to do aid because they didn't want people looting. Do you think that could be-I don't think they have a plan.

They have no plan. I think it's complete incompetence is the problem. Okay. So there's not some big grand scheme Team.

It's like the secret service.

Yeah. Plead failure. I personally never saw one FEMA person the entire time. Are you serious? I never saw one. The only one I saw was a protection security team. They brought him from California. It was like a FBI, like a raid team. They're just sitting there where the food supply was, where we would usually stop to get food. And they're just sitting there in plates, full plates, long guns, suppressors. They were cool. We went and talked to them. Most of them were former soft guys. But I was like, What are you guys doing? And they're like, oh, we're here on behalf of FEMA. And they're like, ever since Katrina, they always had a security team. But I never saw a FEMA official. They were just sitting there literally plates on just waiting for something. I don't think they ever did anything. But a couple of guys, we said, the guy at the airport, Rutherford, is it Dean? Whatever they got. Devon? Devon. He had FEMA contractors. They were contracting on behalf of FEMA come talk to him about how they wanted him to start running operations there, but no actual FEMA officials. So I personally never saw any FEMA officials.

The only, I think, politician I ever actually saw was Lieutenant Governor. Who else? I saw Pat Harrigan. He's a buddy running for Congress up there. He's a former Green Beret. I think that's it, I want to say. There was no actual officials other than fire chiefs and stuff like that.

There was no- But I don't think FEMA is evil. The people who work at FEMA are not evil. I think they're just a part of a big bureaucratic system that is so large, they're not efficient to get the job done.

I don't want to demoralize anybody that is working for FEMA, for National Guard, for government organizations who is legitimately just trying to help. This is an issue at the highest level. And once again, those folks, hopefully, one day are held for incompetence or malicious activity. But is there anything else when it comes to the government's response that you guys want to cover?

Well, like I said, I think waiting for a government response should never be your first plan. Ariel Recovery would love to work with towns to come up. Pick a town. Let's make a town the model for self-sustainment and survivability. Come up with a communication plan, come up with a a distribution plan of supplies, come up with an accountability plan for who's where, who's missing, and really build a model for other towns to build off of.

That would be genius. What can people help with? What do the people need the most? Is it money? Is it chainsaws, food, water, medicine, blankets?

Not money because they-They're good $750.

They're good.

Yeah, they got $730. They got nowhere to go spend it on. They can't buy anything online. They live on the mountains. Nothing can be delivered to them.

You didn't hear that? No.

The government's giving everybody $750.

They can't go to an ATM to get the money out because there's no power. They can't use their cell phones to pay with anything via phone because their phones are probably dead. And you can't buy anything from businesses because they don't have power. So money for the people doesn't really help them in this moment.

No. Really, what they need is It's food. There's also a concern right now for cold weather gear since winter is coming up, and these people aren't going to have power. Some of them probably maybe till the end of the year. So cold weather gear, things like that. People just bring their hands up there to put work in.

What do they bring it to?

Harley-davidson in Asheville is being ran by a former soft guy, and he is doing an amazing... He's running that as a soft mission. I ran to one of my CCT friends who's running the HLZ out there. They're landing about six helicopters deep out there. He's controlling it. They're doing refuelings. They have chainsaws, generators, everything. They're doing probably the best we've seen. A hundred %. And then at Hickory, Operation Air Drop, they're doing a really good job over there, controlling all these air missions. Then aerial recovery, we're out there doing our part as well. But really, just anywhere, just working in the food kitchens over there by the airports and resupply drops, it's huge. We had a Two ladies from Charlotte reach out to us and they were like, We're just going to bring you guys meals. Just having a hot meal and hot coffee for first responders going out first thing in the morning just changes your mental mood, just even going out. It made a huge difference. There's work for anyone to get out there and help, but I don't want to say right now it's a financial situation. It probably will become later on when they can actually use funds.

But a lot of these places, the money is useless. There's nothing for them to use it.

I would say the biggest need right now is heavy equipment. You got to get these roads. You got to get the communication or the transportation system resolved, or these people are going to starve. The people that we talk to, they probably have about a month. Damn. Before they're going to be the ones calling for an EVAC if they can even get a call out. A lot of people didn't want to leave. It was their life savings to come into the hills of North Carolina and build a property without insurance. Everything they have is there. They're not going to leave. But the EVAC business is going to be a lot more active as it gets colder and as the time goes on.

I mean, are you guys going to need financial support?

We've got a We have a fundraiser set up. I think it's raised about $800,000. So the people have been very, very generous. We just started another fundraiser for Hurricane Milton. I can tell you in the past, we responded to the Hawaii wildfires. We We had people in Ukraine, we had people in Morocco. We do things globally. And in most of those cases, we do it out of our own pocket. Our founders are very, very generous people. And their mentality is God will provide. We've got a program where we take veterans and put them through a 12-month program to heal them and then train them and give them purpose, a new mission. So we're preventing veteran suicide in that regard because we're giving them a new mission and giving them hope. And then we're using them as humanitarian special operators to go around the world and help people that are in their darkest moments.

What are you guys expecting in this next hurricane? The one that's coming to Florida, what's the name of it?

Milton. We're literally leaving from this show to get in the plane and go right back down there and link up with the team to push out tomorrow morning for it. But I think it's going to be a bad one just because they're still cleaning up. There's a lot of debris, and those are going to be flying missiles. I know they're trying to get it all. They're doing a good job of getting it all, but that hurricane just hit a week ago. So there's still a lot of damage. But that storm surge into the Tampa area. Tampa flood's really bad, so people just need to get out. They got to push inland, get safe. The good thing with Florida, though, we're very good at handling emergencies. We have good leadership. We have a strong C2 command and control. So Florida will be established very quickly. But there's just to be that downtime of, let's get the roads back up, the power lines, getting the water systems up. So it's going to be a bad one, but Florida is definitely prepared for it.

And what are the links? So when you guys How do I say this? Is this compartmentalized for fundraising for each disaster?

It is. So we have the fundraiser for Hurricane Helene, the fundraiser for Hurricane Milton. And those are I posted on our Instagram, Arial Recovery Group. In the bio section, you can find those.

I know you guys are asking for heavy equipment. You brought up volunteers. What can the everyday person do who can't travel across the country to go work in a kitchen? They don't have the means to send an excavator or a steamroller out there. What can they do?

They can donate or they can do their own supply drive. We had several folks- Set them up. Putting together packages of care items and then having them flown into the area. You talked about FEMA earlier. That airplane almost got shut off. Flying into Asheville Airport, we had to Go back to our buddy Devon at Hickory and get him to allow that aircraft to land and offload all the supplies yesterday.

Another big thing is spreading the awareness. I know everyone's hearing all this misinformation. I get accused by people like, You're a liar. You're spreading false information. You're looking for your 15 minutes of Fame, all this nonsense stuff. But I actually have the real video showing this stuff. And these other people online are just lying. They're reading articles. They're like, well, I read there's 6,000 military people there. And I'm like, where are they at? I'm here. I don't see them. So there's a lot of misinformation, but keep spreading it. I mean, my own video got fact-checked by a third party. Are you serious? Yeah, it really did. My own video got fact-checked. And it's like, this is false information. I'm just like, that's my own video. So there's a lot of... They're really trying to suppress the story of what's really happening there. Actually, Jeremy, the founder of Area Recovery, he was meeting with the mayor, and they had CNN there at Late Lore, and he was escorting CNN, the biggest fake news network there is. And they wouldn't even let CNN videotape the disaster areas. They'd only let them film areas that weren't that bad.

Are you serious? That's how bad it is when they don't even allow CNN to actually film the real story. And speaking of late, Laura, we should probably talk about that. That was our very first day of arriving. So when we arrived into Rutherford Airport, as we were making connections with helicopter pilots on my pilot app, there was a TFR, a temporary flight restriction, specifically over late Lore and Shidney Rock. So no aircraft could fly in and out of it. So we were trying to figure out why that was because we wanted to take my plane and go up and just recon and to see what was going on. We called the guy that put it up. He was in charge of- Franky. Franky. Let's name drop. Franky. The guy Franky at Emergency Management Services, I don't know his last name, was like, Oh, yeah. We put it up to basically stop... Because the guy that flew his helicopter in there to drop off supplies, they were mad about it. He's going viral right now in the news. This guy flew his civilian helicopter in to bring water and food, and they reported him to the FAA.

They were like, You can't fly in there. I'm like, Well, look, I'm here State Guard. I'm also here for aerial recovery. I need to get in there because we're pushing in. Plus, we already had an aerial recovery ground team there on the ground who was actually meeting with the mayor of Lake Lour. Charlie asked him, he goes, Well, what altitude can we fly at? He goes, I don't know. And we're like, What do you mean? You put the TFR up. Can we fly over it? What can we do? He's just like, I don't know. And then he really started pushing them hard. And he was like, okay, you guys can fly in there. I'll give you a squat code that will allow you, but you can't land in there. And I'm like, well, yeah, I know. I'm in a fixed wing airplane. I can't land. It's not a rotor. And he's just like, Okay, just don't land there. But you could just tell you didn't know what was going on. So we didn't do the helicopter ride that day, but right after that, we drove in. As we were driving into Lake Lour, there was a Sheriff Deputy, one Deputy sitting there at a checkpoint blocking the road.

He sees us. He goes, Oh, you guys, stop. I already heard about you. You can't come in here. We were like, What do you mean you heard about us? We just got here. He's like, Yeah, area recovery, you're not allowed to come in here. They're talking about you all over the radio right now. He's calling his team who's in late lour with the mayor, and they're like, We don't know what's going on. So we tell this deputy, we're like, Hey, man, we know you're just a messenger. Get me some authority up here. So a police captain comes up to us. Nice guy. He goes, Yeah, I can't let you guys. He goes, They're blocking aerial recovery from coming in. And that's where I'm like, Hey, I'm with the State Guard. I want to go in there. And he's like, I can't do it. He's like, Something about the speaker of the House of North Carolina is blocking you guys from coming in. We were just like, This is not making any sense at all. So he gets on the phone again, and really what it came down to was some people didn't like the temperament of us.

I'll get to that a little bit more. And then they were telling officials to completely kick us out from going So this police captain was like, I will escort you all into the next checkpoint, get you through to your team, because I can probably get a lot of trouble for this. But he was like, I want everyone here to help. He's like, These people need a bat. So good on that police captain.

Well, that was after we threatened him.

Yeah, we threatened him a little bit. This is important. We leave that checkpoint into Lake Lord. There's only one road, right? We leave that checkpoint. We drive through the second checkpoint. He's like, All right, you guys are good to go by yourselves. So we drive in. There's a third checkpoint now. Actually, I should say that second checkpoint probably had four deputies. We go to the third checkpoint, there's eight deputy sheriffs. They're just standing there not doing nothing. They're like, No, guys can't go any further. They just call it out on the radio. We're like, No, we just got Eight fucking deputies sitting there doing nothing?

Interactions with 15.

You got thousands and thousands of people starving to death, dying of not having medicine, babies, no water, and you got eight fucking deputies sitting on their ass. Fifteen. Fifteen deputies sitting on their ass at a checkpoint.

At a single lane road. Single lane. They even had a SWAT vehicle. They had a SWAT uparmard like MRAP that was there. So it gets a little heated, but I started talking to him and I'm like, Hey, what do they have you guys doing? I'm like, Are you guys doing a search and recovery? Doing welfare checks? He was like, We want to. All we can do is stand right here at this checkpoint. I was like, These guys are in their 20s, 30s. He's like, Literally our only orders, we can't to do anything but stand right here. I'm just like, What a waste of manpower. What department is this? It was whatever county late lour is in. This is the Sheriff's Department of that county. They would not let us go through. They're like, Hey, I'm just the messenger. I'm going to get in trouble by the sheriff. We're like, Okay, so the sheriff is denying us. He's like, Yes, the sheriff is denying you per the speaker of the House of North Carolina. We're like, This is just dumb. Then we started... That's when Charlie was like, You guys are about to go viral on the internet.

I'm going to record you denying us to come in. And they were just like, Whoa, okay. You know what? We'll let you go up to the fire chief because he's actually in control of this area. So we roll up to... It was between Chimney Rock and Lake Lour. And there's this Michigan Task Force. We're going to get to these guys, this Michigan Task Force, who is there for profit, we find out later on. And they're there with the fire chief, and they're just their leader. I don't want to put it on the whole team there, but their leader was just Very condescending. He just had this punch me face. And he just kept looking at us with disgust. He just sat there with his hands on his hips and he just looked at us. And then one of our guys who was there on the ground already, he comes up to me and Charlie and he's like, Hey, these guys, they're the problem. They're the ones reporting us to get us kicked out because they don't like us. And we're like, What do you mean? And he goes, Well, I overheard a couple of them saying, he goes, Look at these guys.

They think they're a bunch of badasses. And he actually told me, I can hear what you're saying. And the guy was just like, Oh. But you look at these guys, there were a search and recovery team who had no physical capability to do this job at all. They're all very out of shape, much older. They probably could barely go up 200 yards up the side of a mountain. So it became this dick measuring contest. They're looking at us. We're all former soft guys. Even the leader of their group actually looks over us. He goes, look like a bunch of Navy Seals. I probably wouldn't wrestle you all. And we're like, Hey, man, cut all that out. We're here to rescue people. We're here to put in work. We literally just got here and you're over here worrying about wrestling matches and who's who. Just tell us where we can go push in and get work done. So after we get this little We got our vacation done. We shake hands. Seems like everything's cool. They're like, Okay, you guys can come back here and work. We're like, Great, it's done. We can finally get to work.

But it was already at the evening time. So the Michigan guy in charge of this task force calls for a 7:00 AM meeting the next day. We be there at 7:00 AM, we'll get our products and we'll push out and do work.

And we say two hours away. We're not going to stay in Lake Loar and take up resources from the people who need everything. So we say two hours away. So we're on the road at five o'clock the next morning.

We roll 5:00 AM. Like, wake up-time, 4:30, we're rolling 5:00 AM. We're there like 15 minutes prior. No one's there. 7:00 AM comes up, Fire Chief rolls up. Nobody else Sheriff deputies roll up and we're like, Where are these guys? 7:40, they roll up. 7:40, they roll. Daylight's already burning. And they roll up just like grinning at us. Just like, they have this little smuck looks on their face. They get out and their leader of this group grabs the fire chief and one of the Sheriff people, pulls them away from us and has a little pow wow for about five minutes, comes back around by himself, this guy from Michigan. Same thing, hands on his hips. He goes, Where's your authorisation papers? We're like, What? He's like, Where's your orders to be here? Who authorized you to be here? I was just like, I cannot believe this is happening right now. Charlie is like, We're a nonprofit. We don't need authorisation. We're here to rescue people. I actually have authorisation orders. I'm like, Well, here's my authorisation. I'm from the State Guard. I hand him my phone and he looks at it, he goes, This is useless.

They literally didn't look at it. I was like, No, those are my orders. I'm like, I'm here on behalf of my governor to be here. He was like, I don't even know your capabilities. I'm just like, are you kidding me right now? So he gets in this hole, I can't work with you. And then Charlie is like, why don't you just tell us where you're going to be so we don't cross paths? We'll work over here. You guys work here. Let's just set out our grids. No, I can't even discuss nothing with you. I'm just like, Who is this guy? The fire chief is not even talking to us. So we start questioning him like, who's your authority? Who is giving you your authority to be in control of this area right now. He goes, My authority comes from Michigan State, which comes from North Carolina. I'm like, Okay, well, who? He's like, Well, it comes from Michigan on behalf of North Carolina because they request for us to be here and I'm in control here. So he's literally saying, This is my place. So as he pulls off, he goes and talks to the fire chief a little bit more.

I overhear him saying he needs a helicopter. He's like, I need a helicopter to the fire chief. He's like, he's pointy to me like, I need this helicopter. So I'm like, You know what? I'm going to be cool. I'm doing I'm doing what's good for the people in North Carolina. I don't care about who's in charge. So I go up to him. I'm like, Hey, I got a helicopter. Where do you need to go? What do you need to do? He's like, I can't work with you. I already told you this. I don't know your capabilities or authorizations. So I start trying to explain to him, hey, I'm I'm a combat controller. I'm also an FAA air traffic controller. This is what I do is literally set up Austria Airfields and HLZs. I can land these helicopters out here for you. Put your guys in it and go do the work you need to do. He's like, No, you can't do that. I was like, Well, I'm bringing in. At that time, my State Guard unit was driving up and they had helicopters. I was like, I'm bringing in helicopters in here. He's like, No, you're not.

I was like, Well, you're not going to stop me. He's like, Why put up a TFR? That's when I found out he was the one that told the Franklin Mickey at EMS to put up a TFR because he started telling me that he was so proud of himself about the guy that flew in supplies, and he was so mad about it. He's like, This guy flew in with supplies without my authorisation and just landed in a field. I can't be having people out here landing helicopters, bringing the supplies without talking to me first. So he's like, Yeah, I report him to FAA. And he was just so proud of himself for that.

Wow.

That's sad, man.

They were gone the next day, by the way. They were. They were there for two days, and they were gone. I got that from the fire chief.

So as we started talking to a crew, that's when we found out they were there for profit. We're like, How did you guys get here? And he's like, Oh, we bid on the job. We're like, You bid on the job? He's like, Yeah, North Carolina put out request for crews to show up, and you get paid. I was just like... That's when it started making sense. He didn't want a State Guard unit and a nonprofit there that would out shine him and his crew while they're there for profit. I think that's really what it was.

That's sad, man.

Yeah. Meanwhile, these people are literally trapped. They're dying up there, and they're not getting the help because everybody wants to... They want their little Fame and want to be in charge of everything.

So that wasn't... So correct me if I'm wrong, but that wasn't government.

That was just a- That was just on the ground politics.

That was just a shipbag that was- It was on the politics.

Trying to make money off of people.

As nice as the fire chief was, being nice is getting people killed. And I should say he was already retired. He retired in January. In January, and he even told us they called him back on Sunday. They're like, Hey, will you come back? So he literally volunteered to go back. And he was making a little jump. He's a nice guy, but he's like, Well, they can't fire me. I already retired. And he was just getting walked like a dog by this guy from Michigan and just controlling the whole situation. And then apparently, actually, the Sheriff... I do want to clarify this. Speaker of the House did not deny us. He personally reached out to us at 12:30 at night after my video. He actually texted a guy on our team, my Instagram video. He's like, This was not me. He was apologizing. You have full help. And even his, I think it was his chief of staff or right-hand, whatever it was, a guy named Phil. He called me. He was like, We did not do that. He was like, Who was telling me that? So we gave him the specifics. And then even the sheriff reached out and was like, I did not do that.

And we're like, Hey, well, you need to talk to your deputies because your deputies are the ones telling us that. So you need to clean your own house up on what's going on. So I should say this. It was such nonsense My commander and area recovery were like, You know what? We're just done with it. So we actually left Lake Lour in Chimney Rock. We just abandoned it and went and found other places to go work because we couldn't get any work done.

On the ground. We did several missions in Lake Lour in Chimney Rock via air.

But we had to pull the ground crews out because it was just- It was just too much drama. We couldn't get no work done. Like, nothing.

Man, that's sad for those people. That is really sad for those people. Well, I want to wrap this up. I wanted to get you guys in here, get what you're doing, how we can help these people, what's actually going on on the ground. I really appreciate you guys coming in here to get the word out. I know time is of the essence, and you got to get back down to Florida, but I do. We, here at SRS, want to make a donation, and so I'm going to leave it up to you guys. We can donate $10,000 or we can give you $10,000 worth of supplies to go back with you.

Awesome. It's up to you. Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Are we wrapping up right now?

Yeah. You got something else?

I do got something else for you. Let's hear it. I know you always to do gifts, and obviously this was not prepared at all, but my wife came up here a couple of days ago. She brought a couple of stuff for me before we even knew we were coming on the show, just like handouts. So I actually got you a gift.

Oh, I got you guys a gift, too. Oh, Forgot to do this at the beginning.

Thank you. I've always wanted these gummy bears. There you go. Yeah, I've always wanted these. There you go. Well, I got a gift for you as well. So I really do do bur photography, and people don't believe me just because my appearance. They're like, You don't like a photographer? I'm like, I know, but I took this photo in Chile in May. Damn, that's cool. This is the bag. I'll hold this up. I don't know if you guys can see it. So photography, I really like being out in nature. Nature is my happiness and stuff like that. And I always say it's where I healed myself coming out of the military and just everything else, just being out in nature. So I got into photography, and I didn't want to become about money or anything like that. So any the business makes, I just give to military charities. And the prints, usually when there's like something bad happens, I'll take a certain print, I'll sign it, and I'll auction it off and do things like that. So I know you're a very big Christian, and I took this photo earlier this year down in Bonita Springs at a church near my house, and I thought this would be a perfect one.

I want to send you the print. Obviously, I didn't have it because we were in North Carolina, but I thought you would really appreciate this. It is a bald eagle landing on top of the steeple on top of the cross on top of the church in Bonita Springs, Florida.

That's awesome, man.

Thank you. It just worked out that my wife literally randomly grabbed this shirt out of my office. And then I won't go through them all, but we had a bunch of kids shirts because that's what my wife brought a lot of these just to hand out to kids. They had T-shirts and birds and stuff like that. But I figured your little kiddos or someone you know could use it in a little bird bag. So that's my gift to you.

Man, thank you. That's awesome. And if that print shows up...

It will show up. Can you sign it? I will sign it. I will sign it, and I'll send it to you.

It'll be hanging in the studio, man. Thank you.

What I've got for you, Sean, here is a bracelet that we give our heroes. We have a Heal the Heroes program. It's a 12-month program I was telling you about. It says Force for Good. What it is, is it's a reminder that all your experiences, all your military time, all the things that you've done and seen in your life can be used as a force for good. Our program takes people out of alcohol addiction, out of drug addiction, out of depression. But this is the reminder that we give those guys to look at every day. That's for you to either keep or to give to someone that you know that might need it.

Force for good. Thank you, gentlemen. Well, I just want to say it's an honor to be interviewing you guys. It's amazing what you guys are doing, and especially with the fact that we do have a failing government right now. I'm just really thankful for you, and I know everybody else is, too. So God bless you, and God speed in the next disaster.

So cheers. Thank you. Thank you..