AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 26

BRIEFING
GI V ING BACK /
Volunteer airlift in the Carolinas
GA pilots help in Hurricane Helene's wake
BY DAVE HIRSCHMAN
THERE WAS NO master plan. No organizational chart. No job definitions. There was
only an acute need among tens of thousands of people cut off by the remnants of
Hurricane Helene from food, drinking water, and electricity in the mountains of
Georgia, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina and an overwhelming desire
to help among those who could.
At Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU) in South Carolina, the relief effort
started with a few social media posts.
Julia Byron, a flight instructor and office manager at Greenville Aviation, took a
flight school airplane loaded with supplies and dropped them at Asheville Regional
Airport (AVL), the distribution point at the epicenter of hurricane-spawned floods.
Isaiah and Lori Burch, owners of Happy Helicopters, filled an R44 with as much
as it would carry and flew to hard-hit Hendersonville, North Carolina, and landed
at the Western North Carolina Air Museum there. Talking to residents allowed
volunteers to customize future loads to bring exactly what people most needed.
" They'd ask for Benadryl, or chain saws, or work gloves, " Lori Burch said. " That
allowed us to bring exactly the kinds of tools and supplies to the places they could
do the most good, and we could do it directly without any bureaucracy. "
The people of Greenville, many of whom were living without electrical power
at home, responded by loading their cars and trucks with supplies and bringing the
goods to a collection point at GMU.
26
AOPA PILOT / December 2024
Michael Byars of Spartanburg, Tennessee, offered
transport of supplies in two of his airplanes. Lori
Burch of Happy Helicopters filled their R44 with the
many donations brought to Greenville's airport.
Byron became a de facto flight scheduler
while fellow instructor Zach Martin and Sandy
Gold organized the south ramp. They took over
a corporate hangar to form 400-pound loads of
more than 1 million pounds of donated items
and marshalled arriving airplanes into lines at
the self-serve fuel pump. The operation ran so
smoothly that some pilots never stepped out of
their airplanes. They just delivered their goods
and took off to retrieve more.
" The lines of people driving up in their cars
was especially touching, " Byron said. " You know
a lot of them aren't in the best of circumstances
themselves, yet they're going out of their way to
help others even less fortunate. "
CHRIS ROSE

AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024

Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Intro
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Cover1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Cover2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 5
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - 6
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Cover3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2024 - Cover4
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