#138 Aerial Recovery - The Hurricane Helene Disaster

Jonathan Howard and Charlie Keebaugh are members of Aerial Recovery, a nonprofit organization focused on disaster response and humanitarian aid, particularly in areas affected by natural disasters and crises. They specialize in using aerial technology, such as drones and helicopters, to assess damage, deliver supplies, and support recovery efforts. The organization often collaborates with local communities, governments, and other NGOs to provide assistance and facilitate recovery. Their work includes search and rescue operations, medical supply deliveries, and providing essential resources like food and clean water. By leveraging innovative technologies and a network of trained veteran volunteers, Aerial Recovery Group aims to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of disaster response efforts. Recently, they've deployed to areas affected by Hurricane Helene to assist in the rescue and recovery effort. You can donate to the effort below. Aerial Recovery Links: Donate to Hurricane Helene Relief - https://secure.givelively.org/donate/aerial-recovery/2024-hurricane-helene-disaster-response Donate to Hurricane Milton Relief - https://secure.givelively.org/donate/aerial-recovery/2024-hurricane-milton-disaster-response-0f7853c7-995e-4ca4-9e94-229378ce8128 Website - https://aerialrecovery.org IG - https://www.instagram.com/aerialrecoverygroup FB - https://www.facebook.com/AerialRecoveryGroup Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Vigilance Elite Patreon - https://patreon.com/vigilanceelite Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Shawn Ryan?

  Charlie Keibach, Jonathan Howard, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. So, you guys kind of popped up on my radar. We've been getting blown up with messages wanting us to cover, you know, 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 kind of want to cut right to the

• 0:50Shawn Ryan?

  chase on what you guys are seeing down there. If any of these rumors are true about what we're hearing on, you know, from other people on the ground as far as blocking aid and what's actually going on. And then, and then I'd like to wrap it up with, you know, 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 Keibach, you are the Chief Development Officer at Aerial Recovery, which is a Nashville-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing comprehensive healing to veterans and first responders. At Aerial Recovery, you empower

• 1:32Shawn Ryan?

  these individuals with a new mission to respond to disasters and to combat human trafficking on a global scale. Aerial 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 J-TAC for a 2nd Ranger Battalion in the early days after 9/11.

• 1:55Shawn Ryan?

  After leaving service in 2005, you establish yourself as a business growth expert, helping two companies land on the prestigious INC 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. 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 Missions Unit, created by Governor DeSantis, and are currently the Impact Operations Lead at Aerial Recovery. You are also a former Combat Controller, CCT. In addition to your military service, you are a successful businessman.

• 2:40Shawn Ryan?

  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 Avonstate, 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 seeing. So, where do we start? How did you guys get involved in this?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  So, 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 Steinhatchee.

• 3:42Shawn Ryan?

  And what were you guys seeing there?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  A pretty rundown, you know, a town of not very well-built structures. So you know no one had insurance. You know, everything they have is gone with that storm.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  We worked hand-in-hand with the local law enforcement, the firefighters. At one point, we were leapfrogging the firefighters to clear the road to get from Perry to Steenhatchee.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  It was a great operation down there in the fact that everybody worked very, very well together. Information was shared, resources were shared. You know, we were, we were working hand-in-hand with the officials there.

• 4:29Shawn Ryan?

  Was FEMA down there?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Not yet. I think I heard they were gonna come like three days later or something like that. But down there, there was no red tape. And for our unit, the SMU, that was actually our very first mission to be activated on. And DeSantis and all the floor leadership were like, "We don't really know what you guys do as operators. Just do whatever you do." Like, and that's what we did. Like, we have a great commander and former pair of rescue guy. And he was like, "We're gonna go do what others can't do, and we're gonna find work and get after it." So the main mission to get down there was just clearing trees. I think my team alone cleared about 46 miles of road.

• 5:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Just in about five-hour period, just chainsaws, just pushing through to Perry. And then we basically hit multiple roads, linked up with aerial recovery. I should say, this was actually the first time me and Charlie actually met in person and worked together.

• 5:16Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  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, we're just busy. So 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.

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  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 like even with aerial, 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 Steenhatchee was high. When we got there at first light... Probably was at least chest deep, most places of water. So we're 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.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And the, the National Guard folks were there.

• 6:12Shawn Ryan?

  They were.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, 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.

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  With a Chevy.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they had, they had, yeah, they had no equipment. They're there doing their best, but, uh, you know, ill-prepared for that type of response.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:35Shawn Ryan?

  Is the special missions unit, is that a new?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Brand new.

• 6:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's brand new? When did that get established?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Um, this year.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  January?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Uh, pretty much this year. So they started the state guard about two years ago and, um, and then DeSantis, Governor DeSantis basically wanted his own like JSOC unit for the state. Um, and then we did the first selection class last October and then the last class was in January. So it literally just got put together.

• 7:03Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  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 like as we were doing that, we were mission prepping for the hurricane and that was our very, very first mission to show our capabilities, which was great because we, we were able to do that.

• 7:23Shawn Ryan?

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

• 7:26Speaker 02

  All former operators or very unique backgrounds, like K-9 handlers, stuff like that. Uh, we have one guy who was like a fire captain. So he comes in very handy for what we're doing, like emergency missions.

• 7:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Um, he's also built like a Viking. So his physical capability is great.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  But pretty much everyone's either former SEALs, Green Berets, uh, Rangers, pair of rescue or combat controllers, EOD as well.

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

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

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I think, I think most states are going to follow what we're doing. And I mean, it's great. We have, um, we, we even have our own fixed wing, rotary wing. Uh, like DeSantis is just going full blown with it.

• 8:01Shawn Ryan?

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

• 8:11Speaker 01

  So John shared his position with me on his cellphone, which was a mistake. So now I'm tracking him. So I saw that he had made his way home. And our team heard about the devastation that happened in North Carolina. And we sent 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. So we jumped in his private plane, flew up to Rutherford County Airport, and landed there and just kind of did the soft thing. Once we got there, which was, let's try to figure out our next move and get creative. So 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.

• 8:51Shawn Ryan?

  Literally. No kidding. So you guys, so you guys literally just flew out here with the plan?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 8:57Shawn Ryan?

  Or you flew out here with the plan? You guys both flew out here with the plan of just, hey, let's just get on the ground, figure it out?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  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. Like, I'm going there right now with aerial recovery. So they're like, perfect, go there, get intel. Because there wasn't really any kind of intel. Like, 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? Like, we just need to get up 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.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  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. And 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.

• 10:16Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  He paid all out of 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 like seven to nine thousand dollars a day.

• 10:26Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like in fuel and the pilot.

• 10:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 10:29Speaker 01

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

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:35Shawn Ryan?

  Amazing.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, like without those two, we couldn't have done what we did.

• 10:40Shawn Ryan?

  So what we, so I saw a video of you, I believe it went viral. About, you know, about some of the frustrations you were seeing on the ground and, 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. So what is, I'm gonna play that video right now. Yeah. Overlay it on the, on the episode.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  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. So my name is Jonathan Howard. I'm a member of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit. And I'm also up here with Aerial Recovery, a nonprofit. I came up here on Sunday with Aerial 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 gonna 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. And I'll say this now, I'll say at the end of the video, the only thing I need from this video is helicopters. If I have helicopters, I can save lives.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  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 painted on the ground and we're dropping down and saving them.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  What got me fired up about this was yesterday, me and my team did the rescue of that 11 day old baby. And all these government officials and social media, they're showing that video, that pictures and video of that rescue and claiming that, like they have some, like government helped with that. And.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  I mean, even USA, I think it was USA Today wrote an article about it saying it was a Florida National Guard that went and got it, like with a helicopter. No, it was me, my buddy Charlie, and a civilian named Zeb with his own personal helicopter out of Wilmington, North Carolina. Like, without that civilian, that baby would be dead. And the old lady we went and rescued after that, she'd be dead too, because she had one day left of oxygen. That no one was going to go get them. I will tell you, when we go up in the air, I probably see forty civilian helicopters. 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,

• 13:21Speaker 03

  and they have no ability to go rescue these people other than what they can drive to. And 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 sixties coming up here tomorrow, which is great. I love that, but like, I still don't understand why we don't have more helicopters. Like, we'll get a lot of work done with that, but there's no, there's no military, there's no, no one's doing nothing. I just, it blows my mind. And they're not even allowing people to see what's really going on. One of our friends yesterday, they were actually escorting CNN down to Lake Lor,

• 14:04Speaker 03

  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 I mean, it is bad. I should also say, when I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in, the Sheriff Department. And it was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was the Speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in, and trying 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 kind of political BS that is happening here right now.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Like, 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. And these people, like I'm saying, these people are limited to 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, and 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.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  He's not even looking for a reimbursement. I think we did four refuelings yesterday. And that was like just in half a day's work. We're in Asheville, and I saw two Air Force helicopter 60s, and I knew there were PJs just looking at them. And I went up to them like, "Hey, guys, like, what are y'all doing?" And like, "This is what you need to be doing, this, this, this, this is how I'm finding people." And they're like, "We can't go. We're waiting on Title X orders." And I'm like, "What?" They just, 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 JSO 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. And I don't know why they're doing it. I don't know what kind of conspiracy.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  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. So 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.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um, who got that mission? So we got that lead from Save Our Allies? That's right. Okay.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Right, I'm sure you're familiar with those guys.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's Chad Robichoff's guys, right?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  That's right, 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. A life-or-death situation. So we jumped in the helicopter. We were in Rutherford County Airport, which is about 15 minutes away.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  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, if the request was still active. Because we'd, by this time, we'd already been on multiple missions that were, you know, dry holes.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And so, spoke to Lisa on the phone. She's, 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, of the angel connecting us there at the airport. His team just happened to be...

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Same town.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  In the same town, at the same time, five minutes away.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Everything worked out the way it should've. Like, 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 it's... Devin. Devin and his son Tristan. His son's 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 is said life or death. And so, that was basically all the intel we had on it. So I asked the, 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's gonna die."

• 18:23Speaker 02

  And he was like, "Done." And he literally just backed up his fuel truck and just started refueling the helicopter. Me and Charlie got in it as I was coordinating with my, my PJ Paul on the ground. And then he, I sent him the address. And then like two minutes later, he's calling me, he's like, "I'm here." And I was like, "How are you there that quick?" And he was like, "I was here, like, 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. So I don't know how he was even there. But he was able to stabilize the baby, get it on oxygen, and just get the vitals stable. So as we're flying in, the state guard SMU guys were there. They started, the PJ started making an HLZ. We found a field. I'm looking at imagery on my phone. Like, we can land there, but I mean,

• 19:08Speaker 02

  there's power lines all around. And as we're coming in there, I mean, Mark Rosen, an awesome pilot, I mean, this isn't what he does. I mean, he flies, you know, Gulfstreams around the world. And he's like putting it down the field for the very first time, in the middle of the field.

• 19:21Shawn Ryan?

  You have a, you have a fixed wing pilot flying a rotary ring aircraft?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  He's also a fighter. This guy had, I think he said over 22,000 flight hours.

• 19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  So very, very, very experienced. And he's been flying helicopters all over, but he's not used to doing like a 1/60 mission, you know, he's not dropping down in the fields and landing on rooftops. So he dropped down in that field and we had a bunch of our SMU guys there with the baby. A buddy Byron come run out with the little, I forgot, baby crib or holder, oxygen.

• 19:53Shawn Ryan?

  Car seat.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Car seat, yeah. And we basically just loaded them into the helicopter, took off, and we flew right to Mission Hospital in Asheville.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  At the same time, we had to communicate with the hospitals, let them, let them know we were coming.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Uh, we found the radio frequency. Uh, 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.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  So as we were coming to that rooftop, uh, Mark was like, find me a place on the ground. I was spotting the front seat, looking for an HLZ. And there was two helicopters parked in the HLZ, so we couldn't land on the ground. And there was one on top of the roof. And it was a little bit windy, oh, I say, it was very windy, a little bit of rain. And he was like, I was like, Mark, the only place he can go is on that roof. I was like, it's pretty big, like, you should be able to put it down. He goes, I've never landed on a roof. And I was looking at the windsock up there and it was a direct crosswind. And that that crosswind was like the top of the building for the hospital. So he was kind of nervous about it. I was like, you, you just gotta get it down. And as we were coming in, about 10 feet above, the winds were just like, I mean, it was pushing us. Like, it was real, real strong. But he got

• 21:04Speaker 02

  down. Me and Charlie hopped out with the baby, grandma, mom, rushed them inside and they had a full staff there. I mean, they had probably, I think, two doctors, three nurses.

• 21:11Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 21:12Speaker 02

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

• 21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's amazing.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I'm not a very big emotional guy, but like my emotions were like running very high in that mission. And then like, once we actually got that baby in that doctor's hand, like, I actually like wanted to cry. Like, I just never, like, I just, I, it was hard to describe, but like, it just, it was, I don't know, it was just talking on my heart.

• 21:47Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is, uh, you guys are fucking awesome.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but yeah, at the time, we didn't know it, but it was 11 day year old premature baby with brittle bone disease, uh, low iron and something else that it, it had already been like diagnosed with.

• 22:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know the baby's name?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Mason.

• 22:05Shawn Ryan?

  Mason.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:10Shawn Ryan?

  I love hearing that, man.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:12Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are a godsend. Who, what government organizations are taking credit for your guys' work?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  It was some sort of, again, the daily, the daily updates that the, the guard folks were putting out, cause I actually reached out to the, the author of the article in USA Today. Like, you write something bad, I will, I will hunt you down and send you a nasty email. I learned that from my mom.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  They were saying it was like North Carolina National Guard, nothing, not trying to discredit them, those guys are doing their part, but like 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 kinda saw it being spread all over social media. And I was just like, y'all are disgusting. Like, literally, these people are out here dying. And 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. So.

• 23:06Shawn Ryan?

  How are these, how are, how is everybody getting in touch with you guys? Cause everything we're hearing is there's no communications, there's no Starlink, there's no nothing.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Facebook, um, messages direct to people like ourselves.

• 23:18Speaker 01

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

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Like five miles.

• 23:27Speaker 01

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

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I think there was a grid or an address and it just said like, people here need help.

• 23:40Speaker 01

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

• 23:50Shawn Ryan?

  That's how you guys are IDing?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  So the, the, 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 area, I'm gonna say it was probably 10 miles in, were just completely washed away, like just completely eroded. So there's no way to get in there.

• 24:06Shawn Ryan?

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

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  You can see the 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, said SOS. And then probably 30 yards away from that, it was carved in the mud, probably about a foot wide SOS. So I was like, hey Mark, like, let's go down there. But it was like, on a valley, the road was washed out. And I'm trying to find an 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 like on this little small piece of concrete next to a house and a hill and then a washed out road, which we couldn't land there because we were afraid it would collapse into the river.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  And then we shut down, got out, started talking to them. That's usually how we get our intel. We start talking to them, hey, like, what's going on? Who needs help? And they're like, 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.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  And they said, they said she won't leave. She's not gonna leave.

• 25:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Cause her whole, whole, whole family was there. And like, emotions are high. Like, when they, when they first see you, and we're the first people to reach them, I think that was like day four. Like, they're just like, you can see the cut, kind of the color come back to their face. But they were, everyone we kept running into like them, they didn't wanna leave because they thought the government would be there in a week. So they're like, oh, like, everything's gonna be okay in a couple of days, right? Like, it's day four already. And I'm like, y'all don't know how bad this is. Cause they're thinking it's just their river that's washed out, not the entire like North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia. And we've shown them videos and they're just like, oh. I'm like, you're probably not gonna have a road for two to four months. That would kind of change their opinion, them wanting to leave. But that lady, yeah, go back to her.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  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, like, great, you know, if it wasn't for Mark, we wouldn't have been able to do that, or Zeb. But as we were taking off, I just, Mark, he was like, basically, oh, God, he just yanked the power up, and there was a power line like right in front of us. We didn't even see it. And then I was like, okay, I'm like, looking out, and then there was another one right in front of that. So that was kind of like a big eye opener, like, okay, like, we really got to be switched on here, because this is not a normal H L Z 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.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  And we, 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 kind of like 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 kind of situations that were, that were going on. And that, oh, I'm sorry.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  We actually went and checked on that, that area about three days later.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And because we had to leave the husband of the woman. He wanted to stay and prepare the house to prevent mold. And so we came back in and checked in them a couple of days later, and you could start to see the signs of the community turning on themselves.

• 27:21Shawn Ryan?

  Is it, is saluting is starting to happen, that kind of stuff, desperation?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Animals taking it.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Trying to control the food.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Fighting for, for resources. You could see that happening then. You could smell the death in that site pretty.

• 27:32Speaker 02

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

• 27:45Shawn Ryan?

  You can, you can smell the bodies.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  But to kind of 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 kind of going out. It was the very next day, day three. And that's, I, that's why I, we were told as, as our unit, we were gonna have like support helicopters. And I, actually, I was told I was gonna have like nine helicopters, like four Chinooks, three sixties, two seventy twos. And we're supposed to have all the support for our unit to go out there and we weren't getting that. And then just talking to everybody else, they weren't getting it. And we were basically told like, you can get a helicopter if it's like life or death. And I'm just like, well, we can't go rescue these people. They're literally like a day left of oxygen. They're gonna die.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  So I was getting just like super frustrated because I had actually coordinated like a hundred and forty person evacuation the next day. Um, I had this like 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 through 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. So I obviously completely jumped the chain of command and, uh, but I don't wait around for things to happen and I was, I was super mad. And I actually got off the phone, um, with my, my titled business partner who's an attorney, uh, Jim Boatman. I go to him for a lot of wisdom. He's a very good, godly man. He's, you know, he's a little bit older than me and if I need something, he's usually the one to tell me like,

• 29:13Speaker 02

  don't say those things, you know, watch what you're saying, don't curse, things like that. And, um, he's like, you gotta make a video, John. He's like, you gotta 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. And I was like, all right. So I literally went out there to where our HLZ was and I made that video pretty angrily. And, uh, cause I was just, I was disgusted with what I was seeing. I was, I was mad that they weren't giving us support. They're pretending like everyone there is getting support. But then when the eleven day baby premature video comes out of us rescuing it, they're like, look at us, we're doing everything we can, you know, now they're trying to like pretend like they're helping and like, oh, it was the National Guard that did this. And I was just like, y'all have time to post on social media about what we're doing, but like literally if it wasn't

• 29:58Speaker 02

  for that civilian with his helicopter, that baby was dead, that old lady was dead. And that's when I made that video and I was like, you know what? Whatever's gonna happen to me is gonna happen to me. Like, you know, you guys wanna kick me out of North Carolina, whatever. I even thought like I was gonna get a lot of backlash on that from my leadership, but they were just like, I mean, I was like, that needed to happen. Cause we just weren't getting the support that we needed. And um, and 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, like texting us at 12:30 at night. I had all these feelings like I'm bringing 18 wheelers of truckload supplies. I mean, just night and day difference, even just people like within the area of North Carolina,

• 30:40Speaker 02

  like 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 like the people that were actually living there, they started like thanking us like, thank you for that video and we were just kind of like, we didn't realize how big of a deal it was going to be. Wow.

• 30:56Speaker 01

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

• 31:16Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  The day Joe Biden flew in to Asheville, they had to put up another temporary flight restriction over like the entire airspace there. Um, there wasn't any exact time, it just kind of said from like, I think 11 to like 4 p, 4 p.m. or something. And it wound 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 work. And that was the very first day, we had like no fog, no clouds, no rain. And we were like, oh, we're going to go get all these rescues in. And this was still early in the week, I think it was Wednesday, uh, when people were still very, very desperate. So.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  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." And they were telling him, "If you come here, they're not gonna be able to do their job."

• 32:34Shawn Ryan?

  Can you tell me what senator?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I don't remember his name. Um, I don't remember his name at all.

• 32:39Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  It was just 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 we were, me and him were literally just sitting there with our helicopter right in front of us for like, 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 it was just, that's the kind of, it's like, that's the kind of political nonsense that was happening. And then I think the next day, we had fog again.

• 33:16Shawn Ryan?

  Did anything come of, of the president flying over?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  He didn't even remember that he flew over.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, he didn't remember.

• 33:22Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean?

• 33:22Speaker 01

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

• 33:37Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 33:38Speaker 01

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

• 33:42Shawn Ryan?

  They, they have everything they need?

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Quote, word for word.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all over the media right now. I mean, it's everywhere. But, yeah, it was just...

• 33:50Shawn Ryan?

  Well, pull that clip and insert it as well.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's just, it was just the nonsense where it was like, all crews just got shut down.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  What do the states in the storm zone need, Mr. President? What do the states in the storm zone, what do they need, Jeff, and what you saw today?

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Oh, the storm zone?

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  It's really much stronger than talking about. They, uh, they said everything they need. Uh, we're very happy.

• 34:15Shawn Ryan?

  It's just a non-functioning government, just like we just said. Secret Service isn't functioning, the border isn't functioning, Chinese are coming in, there's a fentanyl crisis, I mean, the outrageous spending. I mean, the only thing that seems to be functioning in this country is the IRS. And, um...

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Hopefully that changes soon. It, it, that's the kind of stuff that was happening. I had another, it was a Coast Guard Squadron Commander of a Seahawk unit, a Blackhawk. And I can't remember if it was South Carolina or North Carolina. He's like, I have been requesting to go there every day. I get denied. Like, they wouldn't send them. And even JSOC- Why aren't they sending the A? All my JSOC buddies, all my boys at the 2-4, PJs, all that, they're literally right there in Fayetteville. They could not get authorization to come. Like, they'd be messaging me, like, dude, we want to come. My old unit, 2-3, they want to come. Just nonsense.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  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 sling load kit? No sling load kit. I think we heard of one sling load operation that happened.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  No sling load kit?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Well, you, you- There were Chinooks there. There's Chinooks there. Like, and they just, they're not doing it.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  So if you have, if you have the people, the equipment, and the experience to go do it-

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Why aren't you doing it? Because someone has to make that decision.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Tell them what the guy told us yesterday from Fort Bragg, the 60th unit.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we ran into a 82nd Airborne guy, and we were excited. We were like, oh, the 82nd's finally here. This is awesome. What are you doing? And he, he, at first was very, you know, standoffish, and then we built some rapport with the guy, and, uh-

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Well, we told him, like, hey, CCT TAPP here. He said, okay, like, we kind of like relaxed.

• 36:08Speaker 01

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

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Their only mission- 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 load capability. They, they literally took it off.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And, and Zeb, Zeb's helicopter was used to fly county officials over their county to do a damage assessment. Multiple times.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, he has a relationship with Zeb, the owner of the aircraft, and he would be texting him to go do missions. And I remember, I think it was like day two, I was like, why is the Lieutenant Governor, the second highest powerful guy, having you as a civilian flight 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 AWOL for three days. I think that was like maybe Wednesday or something like that. But like, you know it's bad when the second highest powerful guy in North Carolina can't even get his own helicopter to fly people around.

• 37:06Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's, um, let's put a pause on the failed government for a minute and talk about what you guys are seeing. So we'll dive back into that, but what, you know, what, from what we're hearing over here, there are entire villages and towns just completely.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:26Shawn Ryan?

  Gone, as in like, they never existed. Is that, is that?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  This is a storm that, this has never happened before. Like, in Florida, when we get a storm, the water rises equally and then it goes away. In the mountains, it goes where it goes. And the people who make the roads evidently followed that same plan because the roads are right next to the rivers. So 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, so you have this big snowball effect of debris taking out all the roads. And what do we say, that, that one river was supposed to be six inches wide and now it's like 60 meters wide?

• 38:08Speaker 02

  It was outside Marion, the county survey guy, he said that, that river originally was only six inches deep and about a foot wide. And 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 flushed 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.

• 38:38Speaker 01

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

• 38:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  And it doesn't, you, you can't build a road overnight. It's gonna take months and months and months.

• 38:51Shawn Ryan?

  And a bridge is even longer.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, so that 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, like big concrete bridges, just gone.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  So any, any logical thinker would see that in, that scenario and go, well, we need helicopters or pack mules, right? I mean, that's the only way to do it.

• 39:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  So there's, there's just no plan. That's, that's the, the bottom line.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:41Shawn Ryan?

  How many people have you guys saved?

• 39:45Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Um.

• 39:47Shawn Ryan?

  Or rescued?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  We, the first three or four days, we had, um.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  It's kind of, we picked, we picked up a lot of people.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 02

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

• 40:06Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have an estimation? Hundred, fifty?

• 40:09Speaker 02

  No, we didn't, we didn't do that many. No, no, we didn't do that many. Um, I'd probably say a good ten, fifteen.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, ten or fifteen.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Ten or fifteen people like that. Cause we can only get, to give you an idea, we can only do about one mission every about hour and a half to two hours.

• 40:22Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Uh, because of weight and fuel.

• 40:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  So we would, you know, fly out 20 to 30 minutes, land there, rescue them, fly them back to where they needed to go. And we had to go refuel, get the next mission. So at that point, it's usually about two hours.

• 40:38Shawn Ryan?

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

• 40:42Speaker 02

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

• 40:50Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys aren't even keeping track. You're just 100% go 24 hours a day.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  There was no downtime. And the, the service is so bad. The only time I'd ever even get service was just when we're up in the air for a little bit, for a few minutes here and there. And then we're back on the ground. And literally 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 nine thirty because of fog. So, you know, about nine thirty, we would go and then we usually had to stop about six thirty. So it would just be go, go, go.

• 41:21Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Entire time.

• 41:22Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  And we would just grab food when we could, grab food and fuel where we could and just, just make it happen.

• 41:28Shawn Ryan?

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

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Medicine.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Medicine, a lot of medicine.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Starlink.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Starlink.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Generators, fuel.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, mainly, so it started basically with like personnel recovery the first couple of days. And then it seemed probably around maybe Thursday, the personnel recovery kind of slowed down. Everyone like basically got out that needed to get out. And then it went more to like insulin, medical supplies, EpiPens. And then once we got a pretty good hold of that, it kind of went more to like Starlinks. Like that way they could just message us and be like, we have an emergency. You know, this person needs this, even the firefighters, we did a lot of firefighter drops. We, so we would actually, in a civilian helicopter, be picking up search and rescue crews, mainly firefighters, and flying them to their locations because they couldn't get any kind of helicopter support. So we would.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  These states that got paid to send task forces to help, we were picking them up and moving them.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  To different locations.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  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 like really balance the weight, but that's what I'm saying, like, people are like, oh, 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? Like, if there wasn't a need for us, we wouldn't be doing these missions.

• 42:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we were moving a lot of people, county officials, state officials, um, search and recovery crews, like we'd even drop our, we'd take our search and recovery guys from aerial, 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 clear in.

• 43:04Shawn Ryan?

  How are you guys delivering fuel for the chainsaws and all that stuff?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Helicopter. With them.

• 43:09Speaker 02

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

• 43:24Shawn Ryan?

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

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Somebody should.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Not you guys.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And I doubt anybody does.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Thousands?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Thousands. I mean, a lot of these people are just, it's so remote. And 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 mule, 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, there's a lot of people stranded. And that's just in the area of western North Carolina, where we are. I know it's even more widespread than that.

• 44:00Shawn Ryan?

  Have you guys done anything in Tennessee?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Nope, not there.

• 44:04Shawn Ryan?

  Not yet.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Not for this storm yet.

• 44:06Shawn Ryan?

  What, you know, what are some of the, where are you guys getting the Starlink from?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Uh, donated. So we, we work a lot with Global Empowerment Mission to, you know, obviously a global nonprofit, and they had a lot donated, and then we would take their supplies that were donated to them and then go,

• 44:26Speaker 01

  you know, deploy them out into the field.

• 44:28Shawn Ryan?

  And, and how long, you know, we talk about, we would talk about when desperation kicks in a lot on the show. And it's really hard for people to kind of fathom what that's like when the community starts looking inward. So what, what, but, you know, that's what happens when people get desperate.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:46Shawn Ryan?

  Starve. You know, they're starving, they're, 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, you know, when did you, what are some of the things you started noticing? When did that start happening?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  That was about day, day two or three.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  That was about Thursday.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Bent Creek.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Bent Creek, yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  The, you know, they would, they would come up to us individually and say, hey, I don't, I don't trust that guy over there.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they really would.

• 45:12Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  It was getting kind of, they'd be like, watch that guy, he's kind of shaking.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  That guy over there by your helicopter, keep an eye on him.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  I look over and he's grabbing the, the prop, the rotor blade, pulling on it. I'm like, don't touch the helicopter, bro.

• 45:24Shawn Ryan?

  It, are they? Stealing each other's supplies or anything like this, anything like that?

• 45:29Speaker 02

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

• 46:14Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Are you seeing communities stand together at all?

• 46:18Speaker 02

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

• 46:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So they are, so a lot of them are supporting each other?

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And that, and that's what needs to happen. Like, 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.

• 46:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  And so these towns and these families, they should all have contingency plans. Like, the government's bad at business. They're just not good at business. They don't protect their resources. They don't, they don't use their resources. Uh, we know the power grid is vulnerable. Have you been to a, a power station?

• 46:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  You could just drive to it right now and chuck rocks at it.

• 46:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they're, they're guarded by a chain link fence.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. So, so you've got a government that's bad at business, doesn't protect their resources, doesn't use the resources they have. Why on earth would you think that they're gonna come save you?

• 47:09Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I mean, I've been talking about it for a long time, you know, the government, it, 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, you know, and, um, you know, NBC actually put an article out saying that this is all a big conspiracy theory. So I, my, uh, so many of my team sent this to me, but you know, this is part of the article. FEMA administrator.

• 47:45Shawn Ryan?

  Deanna or Deanne Chriswell 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. And, you know, here's ABC News. Mayorkas warns 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 I don't, you know, once again mainstream media is, you know, contradicting itself and

• 48:29Shawn Ryan?

  likely is completely full of shit.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  So FEMA's running out of money?

• 48:33Shawn Ryan?

  That's what it, that's what, well, according to the Secretary of FEMA, they're not running out of money, but, you know, Mayorkas is saying they're running out of money, both with the federal government. Who the fuck are we supposed to believe here?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like anything, you know, you have money for what you prioritize.

• 48:50Shawn Ryan?

  And, and, and then, you know, that's another reason why I wanted to bring you guys in is because, yeah, great, thank you, NBC. 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 photo shoots. And, um, I'm getting fucking pissed just talking about it, but, um...

• 49:13Speaker 01

  You should make a video and go viral.

• 49:15Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's what we're doing right now.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 49:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, um, but, you know, there are, there have been reports that FEMA is blocking aid and, and blocking supplies. Do you think, you know, 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 they, there's a bigger plan and maybe they just don't, they don't want people looting? And, and I know on the last hurricane down in, uh, last, was it last year when Sanibel Fort Myers got hit? You know, and I know they were keeping people from, this is from Mark Turner, they were keeping people from going to Sanibel to do aid because they didn't want people looting. Is it, do you think that could be?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  I don't think they have a plan.

• 50:01Shawn Ryan?

  They have no plan.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I think it's complete incompetence is the problem.

• 50:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  So there's not some big grand scheme.

• 50:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's like the Secret Service.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:10Shawn Ryan?

  Complete failure.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  I personally never saw one FEMA person the entire time. I saw.

• 50:15Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  I never saw one. The only one I, the only one I saw was, it was like protection, security team. They brought in from California. It was like a FBI, like, 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, like 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, why, why are you, I was like, what are you guys doing? And they're like, oh, we're just here on behalf of FEMA. And they're like, ever since Katrina, they always have like a security team. But I never saw like a FEMA official. They were just sitting there literally like plates on, just waiting for something. And I don't think they ever did anything, but um, a couple of guys we said, the guy at the airport, Rutherford, uh, is it Dean? Whatever they got.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Devin?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Devin. Um, he had FEMA, like contractors. They were, they were contracted on behalf of FEMA come talk to him. About how they kind of wanted him to like start running operations there, but no actual FEMA officials. So I, I personally never saw any FEMA officials. The only, I think politician I, I ever actually saw was Lieutenant Governor.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  There was like no actual like officials other than like fire chiefs and, and stuff like that. Like there was no.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think FEMA is evil. Like 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.

• 51:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that, you know, I don't wanna, I don't want to.

• 51:48Shawn Ryan?

  I don't want to demoralize anybody that is working for FEMA, for National Guard, for government organizations who is, who is legitimately just trying to help. This is a, this is an issue at, at the highest level. And um, and once again, those folks, you know.

• 52:04Shawn Ryan?

  Hopefully, one day, are held accountable, you know, for incompetence or malicious activity. But what are, is there anything else when it comes to, you know, the government's response that you guys want to cover?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, I think, I think waiting for a government response should never be your first plan. You know, aerial recovery would love to work with towns to come up, you know, pick a town. Let's make a town, uh, 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, um, and really build a, a, a model for other towns to, to build off of.

• 52:47Shawn Ryan?

  That would be, that would be genius. What, what, what can people help with? What do these guys, what is, what do the people need the most? Is it money? Is it chainsaws, food, water, medicine?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Not money, because they-

• 53:02Speaker 01

  They're getting $750, they're good.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're getting $750, they got nowhere to go spend it on, you know? Like, they can't buy anything online. They live on the mountains, nothing can be delivered to them.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  You didn't hear that?

• 53:12Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  They're getting, the government's giving everybody $750. They can't go to an ATM to get the money out, because there's no power.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  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, money for the people doesn't really help them in this moment.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  No, all, really what they need is, is food. There's also a concern right now for cold weather gear, since winter's 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, um, I mean, people just bringing their, their hands up there to put work in.

• 53:52Shawn Ryan?

  What do they bring it to?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Uh, Harley-Davidson in Asheville is being ran by a former SOF guy, and he is doing an amazing, he's running that as a SOF mission. They even, they even have, I ran into one of my CCT friends who's running the H L Z up there, and they're landing about six helicopters deep out there, he's controlling it, they're doing refuelings, I mean, they have chainsaws, generators, everything, they're doing probably the best we've seen.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  And then at Hickory, uh, Operation Airdrop, they're doing a really good job over there, uh, controlling all these air missions, and then aerial recovery, they're out there doing, you know, we're out there doing our part as well, um, but, I mean, really, just anywhere. Just working in the food kitchens over there by the airports and resupply drops is huge. I had a, we had a, two ladies from Charlotte reach out to us and they were like, "We're just gonna bring you guys meals." And like just having a hot meal and hot coffee for first responders going out first thing in the morning, like just changes your mental mood just even going out, made a huge difference. So just, I mean, there's work for anyone to get out there and help, but I don't really, I don't wanna say right now it's a financial situation, it probably will become later on when they can actually use funds,

• 54:59Speaker 02

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

• 55:05Speaker 01

  I, I would say the biggest need right now is heavy equipment. You gotta get these roads. You gotta get the communication or the, uh, the transportation system resolved. Or these people are gonna starve. Like the people that we talked to, um, they probably have about a month. Damn. Before they're gonna be the ones calling for an evac if they can even get a call out. You know, a lot of people didn't wanna leave. It was their, uh, their life savings to come into the hills of North Carolina and build a property without insurance, you know? Um, everything they have is there. They're not gonna leave. But, you know, the, the evac business is gonna be, uh, a lot more active as it gets colder and as the, the time goes on. I mean, are you guys gonna need financial support?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Uh, we've got a fundraiser set up. Um, I think it's raised about eight hundred thousand dollars. Uh, so the people have been very, very generous. We just started another fundraiser for Hurricane Milton. Um, I can tell you in the past, you know, we responded to, to the Hawaii wildfires. We had people in Ukraine. We had people in Morocco. Uh, we do things globally. And in most of those cases, we do it out of our own pocket. Wow. Our founders are very, very generous people. Um, and they, their mentality is, you know, God will provide. Wow. We've got a, a program where we take veterans and put them through a 12-month program to heal them, um, and then train them and give them purpose, uh, a new mission.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  So we're preventing veteran suicide in that regard because we're giving them a new mission and giving them hope. Uh, and then we're using them as humanitarian special operators to go around the world and help people that are in their, in their darkest moments.

• 56:48Shawn Ryan?

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

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Milton.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Milton. I mean, we're literally leaving from this show to get in the plane and go right back down there and link up with the, with the team to push out tomorrow morning for it. But, uh, I think it's gonna be a bad one just because they're still cleaning up. There's a lot of debris and those are gonna be flying missiles. I know they're trying to get it all. They're doing a good job of getting it all, but I mean, that, I mean, that hurricane just hit a week ago.

• 57:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  So there's still a lot of damage, but that storm surge into the Tampa area, Tampa floods really bad. So people just need to get out. They just gotta, they gotta push inland, get safe. And then, you know, 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, you know, let's get the roads back up, the power lines, getting the water systems up. So it's, it's gonna be a bad one, but Florida's definitely prepared for it.

• 57:47Shawn Ryan?

  And what are the, what are the links? What are the, so do you, when you guys, is this, um, how do I say this? Is this compartmentalized for fundraising for each disaster? Like?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  It is, it is. Uh, so we have the fundraiser for Hurricane Helene, the fundraiser for Hurricane Milton. Um, and those are posted on our, our Instagram aerial recovery group.

• 58:10Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  In the bio section, you can find those.

• 58:12Shawn Ryan?

  What can, so I know you guys are asking for heavy equipment. You brought up volunteers. What can the, what can the, the everyday person do who, 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 steam roller out there. What, what can they do?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  They can donate or they can, they can do their own, uh, supply drive. We had several folks, um,

• 58:40Shawn Ryan?

  Set them up.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Putting together packages of, 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 in Hickory and Get him to allow that aircraft to land and offload all those supplies yesterday.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Another big thing is spreading 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 like, I actually have the real videos showing this stuff.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  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, like, 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." Like, 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 Air Recovery, he was meeting with the mayor, and they had CNN there at Lake Lure.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  And he was escorting CNN, the biggest fake news network there is, and they wouldn't even let CNN videotape the disaster areas. They would 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.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  And speaking of Lake Lure, 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, Temporary Flight Restriction, specifically over Lake Lure and Chimney 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 kind of go up and just recon and see what was going on. So we called the guy that put it up. He was in charge of...

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Frankie.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Frankie. This name dropping. Frankie. Guy Frankie 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. So he's kind of going viral right now in the news. Literally this guy flew his civilian helicopter in and bring like water and food and they reported him to FAA. So they were like, you can't fly in there. I'm like, well, look, I'm here state guard. I'm also here with aerial recovery. Like 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 Lor. So Charlie asked him, he goes, well, what altitude can we fly at? He goes, I don't know.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  And we're like, what do you mean? You put the TFR up like, what can we fly over it? Like, what can we do? He's just like, I, I, 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 like a squat code that'll allow you, but you, you can't land in there. And I'm like, well, yeah, I know. I'm going to fix wing aircraft airplane. I can't land. It's not a rotor. And he's just like, okay, just like, don't land there, but you could just tell he didn't know what was going on. So.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  We, we didn't do the helicopter ride that day, but right after that, we drove in. As we were driving into Lake Lor, there was a sheriff deputy, one deputy sitting there to like a checkpoint. Blocking the road. And he sees us, he goes, oh, you guys stop. I already heard about you. You can't come in here. And we were like, what do you mean you heard about us? Like we, we just got here. He's like, yeah, aerial recovery, you're not allowed to come in here. They're, they're talking about you all over the radio right now. So he's calling his team who's in Lake Lor 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 messenger. Like get me some authority up here. So a police captain comes up to us, nice guy. He goes, yeah, I can't let you in, 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.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  I want to go in there. And he's like, I can't do it. Um, he's like, something about the speaker of the house of North Carolina. Is blocking you guys from coming in. And 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 in. So this police captain was like, I will escort y'all into the next checkpoint and get you through to your team. He goes, I can probably get in a lot of trouble for this, but he was like, I want everyone here to help. And he's like, these people need a bat. So good on that police captain.

• 1:03:20Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that was after we threatened him.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we kind of threatened him a little bit. So we, so we leave, this is kind of important. We leave that checkpoint into Lake Lor. 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. And that, 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. And they're like, nope, guys can't go any further. They just called it out on the radio. We're like, no, we just got-

• 1:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  Eight fucking deputies sitting there doing nothing? Interactions with fifteen- You got thousands and thousands of people starving to death, dying of fucking, not having medicine, babies, no water, and you got eight fucking deputies sitting on their ass. Fifteen, fifteen. Fifteen deputies sitting on their ass at a checkpoint.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  A single lane road, single lane. They even had a SWAT vehicle. They had a SWAT, like, up armored, like, MRAP that was there. So it gets a little heated, but I started talking to them. And I'm like, hey, like, what do they have you guys doing? He's like, he's like, I'm like, are you guys doing search and recovery, doing welfare checks? He was like, we want to. All we can do is stand right here at this checkpoint. And I was like, that, and these guys are like in their twenties, thirties. He's like, literally, our only orders, we can't do anything but stand right here. And I'm just like, what a waste of manpower. So-

• 1:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  What department is this?

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  It was whatever county Lake Lor is in. This is the sheriff's department of that county. So they would not let us go through. They're like, hey, I'm just the messenger. Like, I'm gonna get in trouble by the sheriff. And we're like, okay, so the sheriff is denying us. And he's like, yes, the sheriff is denying you per the speaker of the House of North Carolina. And we're like, this is just dumb. And then we started, that's when Charlie was like, you guys about to go viral on the internet. I'm gonna record you denying us to come in. And they were just like, whoa, whoa, 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 like kind of between Chimney Rock and Lake Lor. And there's this Michigan task force, we're gonna get to these guys.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  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 wanna put it on the whole team there, but their leader was just very condescending, had this, just had this punch me face. And he just kept looking at us with like disgust. He just kinda sit there with his hands on his hips and he just kinda like look at us, just kinda like, 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, he goes, I can hear what you're saying.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  And the guy was just kinda like, oh. But you look at these guys, they 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 kinda became this like dick measuring contest. They're looking at us, we're all former soft guys, even the leader of their group actually looks over at us, he goes, look like a bunch of Navy SEALs, I probably wouldn't wrestle y'all. Just like, and we're like, hey, man, like, cut all that out. Like, we're here to rescue people, we're here to put in work. Like, we literally just got here and you're over here worrying about wrestling matches and who's who. Like, just tell us where we can go push in, get work done. So after we get this little confrontation done, we shake hands, seems like everything's

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  cool, they're like, okay, you guys can come back here and work. And we're like, great, it's done. Like, 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. Like, we be there at 7:00 AM, we'll get our products and we'll push out and do work.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  And we stay two hours away, right? We're not gonna stay in Lake Lor and take up resources from the people who need everything. So we stay two hours away. So we're, you know, we're on the road at 5 o'clock the next morning.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  5:00 AM, 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.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Nobody else. Sheriff deputies roll up and we're like, where are these guys? Seven forty, they roll up. Seven forty, they roll up. Daylight's already burning. And they roll up, just like grinning at us, just like, hmm, you know, just they had this little smug looks on their face. They get out and their leader of this group grabs the fire chief and the, one of the sheriff people, pulls him away from us and has a little powwow for about five minutes. Comes back around by himself, this guy from Michigan, same thing, hands on his hips. He goes, "Where's your authorization papers?" And we're like, "What?" And he's like, "Where's your orders to be here? Who authorized you to be here?" And I was just like, "I cannot believe this is happening right now." And Charlie's like, "We're a nonprofit. We don't need authorization."

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Like, "We're here to like rescue people." So I actually have authorization orders. And I'm like, "Well, here's my authorization. Like, I'm from the state guard." I hand him my phone. And he looks at it. He goes, "This is useless." Didn't even, 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." And he was like, "I don't even know your capabilities." And I'm just like, "Are you kidding me right now?" So he gets in this whole, like, "I can't work with you." And then Charlie's like, "Well, why don't you just tell us where you're gonna be so we don't cross paths? We'll work over here. You guys work here. Let's just kinda like set out our grids." "Nope, I can't even discuss nothing with you." And I'm just like, "Who is this guy?" You know, like, the fire chief's not, not even talking to us.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  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 like, literally saying like, "I'm like, 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." And he's like, he's literally just like, like pointing, he's like, "I need this helicopter." So I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna be cool. Like, you know, I'm doing the, I'm doing what's good for the people in North Carolina. I'm not, I don't care about who's in charge. So I go up to him, I'm like, hey, I got a helicopter. Like, where do you need to go? What do you need to do?

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  He's like, I can't work with you. I already told you this. Like, I don't, I don't know your capabilities, your authorizations. So I start trying to explain to him, like, hey, I'm a combat controller. Like, I'm also an FAA air traffic controller. I can, this is like what I do is literally set up austere airfields and HLZs. Like, 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. Like, 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. And I was like, well, you're not gonna stop me. He's like, well, I put up the TFR. And that's when I found out he was the one that told the Frankie at EMS to put up the TFR, because he started telling me that he was so proud of himself about the guy that flew in

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  supplies. And he was so mad about it. He's like, this guy flew in with supplies without my authorization and just landed in a field. I can't be having people out here landing helicopters, bringing supplies without talking to me first. So he's like, yeah, I report him to FAA. And he was just like so proud of himself for that. Wow. 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, from the fire chief. So as we started talking to the crew, that's when we found out they were there for profit. We're like, how'd you guys get here? And he's like, oh, we've been on the job. We're like, you've been on the job? He's like, yeah, they, North Carolina put out like, requests for like, crews to show up and you get paid. I was just like, that's when I started, it started making

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  sense. He didn't want a state guard unit and a nonprofit there that would outshine him and his crew while they're there for profit. Now, I think that's really what it was. That's sad, man. Yeah. And meanwhile, these people are literally trapped. They're dying up there. Yeah. And they're not getting the help. Cause everybody wants to, you know, they want their little fame and wanna be in charge of everything. So that wasn't...

• 1:11:35Shawn Ryan?

  So, correct me if I'm wrong, but that wasn't the government, that was just a...

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  That was just on the ground politics.

• 1:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  It was just a shitbag that was...

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  It was on the politics.

• 1:11:41Shawn Ryan?

  Trying to, trying to make money off of people.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  As nice as the fire chief was, being nice is getting people killed.

• 1:11:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  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 like, making little, I mean, he's a nice guy, but he's like, "Well, they can't fire me, I'm already retired." You know, 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, I do want to clarify this. Speaker of the House did not deny us. Um, he personally reached out to us at 12:30 at night. Uh, after my video, he actually texted a guy on our team, my Instagram video, he's like, "This was not me." And was apologizing, he had like full help, and even his, I think it was his Chief of Staff or Right Hand, whatever it was, I think a guy named Phil. He called me, he was like, "We did not do that." He was like, "Who was telling you that?"

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  So, we kind of gave him the specifics, and then, um, 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, you need, you need to clean your own house up.

• 1:12:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  On what's going on.

• 1:12:47Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  But, so, I should say this. It was such nonsense. My commander and air recovery were like, "You know what? We're just done with it." So, we actually left Lake Lor and Chimmy Rock. We just abandoned it and went and found other places to go work, because we couldn't get any work done.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  On the ground. We did several, several missions in Lake Lor and Chimmy Rock via air.

• 1:13:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we had to pull the ground crews out, because it was just...

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  It was too much drama.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  We couldn't get no work done.

• 1:13:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Like, nothing.

• 1:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's sad for those people.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  That is really sad for those people. Well, I want to wrap this up. I just wanted to get, you know, 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, uh, coming in here to, to get the word out. And, uh, I know, time is of the essence, and you got to get back down to Florida, but I do, um, you know... We here at SRS want to make a donation and so I'm gonna 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.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:13:58Shawn Ryan?

  It's up to you.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that sounds good.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:14:00Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome, you're welcome.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Are we wrapping up right now?

• 1:14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you got something else?

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I do got something else for you.

• 1:14:05Shawn Ryan?

  Let's hear it.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Um, I know you always like to do gifts and obviously this was not prepared at all, but I, my wife came up here a couple of days ago, she brought a couple of stuff for me to, before we even know we were coming on the show, just like hand out, so I actually got you a gift.

• 1:14:20Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I got you guys a gift too.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:14:24Shawn Ryan?

  Forgot to do this at the beginning.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  I've always wanted these gummy bears.

• 1:14:27Shawn Ryan?

  There you go.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've always wanted these.

• 1:14:29Shawn Ryan?

  There you go.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Well, I got a gift for you as well. Um, so I, I really do do bear photography and people don't believe me just because my appearance. Um, they're like, you don't like photographer? I'm like, I know, but like this is, I took this photo in Chile in May.

• 1:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's cool.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  And, um, this is, you know, the bag and, and I'll hold this up, I don't know if you guys can see it, but, um, so photography, I, I really like being out in nature, nature's like my, my happiness and stuff like that. And it's, I always say it's where I kind of like healed myself coming out of the military and just everything else, just being out in nature. Um, so I got into photography and I didn't want to become about money or anything like that, so any dollar the business makes, I just give to military charities. Um, 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, uh, big Christian, um, and I took this photo earlier this year

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  down in, uh, Benita Springs, um, at a church near my house and I thought this would be a perfect one. I, I, I wanna, I wanna send you the print. Obviously didn't have it because we were, we're in North Carolina, but I thought you would really appreciate this. It is a bald eagle.

• 1:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Uh, landing on top of the, the steeple, on top of the ch- the cross, on top of the church in, uh, Benita Springs, Florida.

• 1:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man. Thank you.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

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

• 1:16:12Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  That's my, uh, that's my, my gift to you.

• 1:16:15Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  It will show up.

• 1:16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Can you sign it?

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll, I will sign it and I'll send it to you.

• 1:16:23Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  What I've got for you, Sean, here is a, uh, a bracelet that we give our, our heroes. We have a Heal the Heroes program. It's a 12-month program I was telling you about.

• 1:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Um, and this, it says, "Force for Good." So what it, 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. Um, you know, and our program takes people out of alcohol addiction, out of drug addiction, out of, uh, depression. Um, but this is the reminder that we give those guys to look at every day.

• 1:17:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  That's for you to either keep or to give to someone that you know that, that might need it.

• 1:17:06Shawn Ryan?

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