By Julia Coin
The Charlotte Observer
HICKORY, N.C. — Right now in North Carolina, an index card could save a life.
Blue-lined, 3-by-5-inch papers sit in a grid on a plastic folding table inside Hickory Regional Airport, listing coordinates and what those stranded in Hurricane Helene’s aftermath need:
Baby formula.
Insulin.
Help.
A patchwork group of pilots inside the two-room airport grab three or four cards at a time, head to their helicopters and fly west. Fuel is expensive. If they end up unable to land on the rickety terrain in the mangled Appalachian Mountains, they need more cards, more options before turning back. Organizers realized that halfway through their second day of missions.
But Andy Petree, a retired NASCAR analyst for ESPN, takes just one card at 5:56 p.m. Monday . The sun will set in about two hours. This is his sixth and last trip of the day. His first was 12 hours ago, when he flew his son out of their hometown, Hendersonville, and dropped him at Petree’s Lake Norman house, one with its own helipad, near Charlotte.
For his second to last trip, Petree flew out to Black Mountain, where he rescued a family of three and their dogs.
Now, Petree loads Pampers diapers, Similac baby formula, his wife’s PB&J sandwiches and a Charlotte Observer reporter into his private helicopter and lifts off from the landing strip that’s about three football fields long.
The 66-year-old is one of 37 pilots offering their private aircraft to Operation Airdrop, a nonprofit that sends volunteer pilots and their aircraft with essential supplies after disaster.
In Asheville, Swannanoa, Lake Lure, Marshall and many parts of western North Carolina, people are only reachable by air. Roads, shredded by the floods, have turned into narrow dirt paths, riverbeds or cliffs into the orange, murky water below.
Hickory, a North Carolina town of about 44,000 known as a furniture manufacturing capital of the United States , is about an hour drive from Charlotte, Asheville and Boone. That’s about 30 minutes in Petree’s helicopter.
We head to Lake Lure in his Robinson 44 Raven 2 — a four-person helicopter he bought to get from his Hendersonville home in western North Carolina to the NASCAR tracks in the middle of the state, close to Concord and the Lake Norman home where his son now sits with 200 pounds of supplies.
Three days ago, as Helene passed over his home state Friday, Petree was in Port Canaveral, Florida , canceling plans to travel from where he and his wife were about to get onto a cruise ship.
He had to help, he said.
The rest of the volunteers, some dropping supplies and clothes and airlifting people out, have similar stories. Some are in matching black pants, black shoes and black shirts that say “Academy of Aviation,” some are in military camo, and some are in jeans and T-shirts that show their neck tattoos.
Hodgepodge helicopters help Helene’s victims
Pockets of destruction rest between Hickory and the Appalachian Mountains . Some areas seem fine, with outdoor furniture unmoved or at least reset. Then a smear of downed trees that will die before their leaves turn into a cluster of colors this year.
Then a river. Then a lake. Then a whole town tattered into pieces.
“That hurricane basically picked up the whole Gulf of Mexico and dropped it right there,” Petree says, pointing to the thick layer of branches, roofs, umbrellas and siding sitting where Chimney Rock used to be.
I tell him this summer, on a trip back to Charlotte from Topton, a town further out west that escaped total ruin Friday, I considered stopping at the quaint lake town. I didn’t.
“Now you’ll never see it,” he says.
Those with homes still intact won’t be able to get to them, he says. Those with their homes and belongings whisked away won’t see it rebuilt. Those dead in the ruin won’t be found for a few more days, months, maybe years, he says.
As of Monday, officials said more than 100 Americans had died in the 10 states hit by Helene. By Tuesday afternoon, there were 57 people confirmed dead from the storm in just Buncombe County in North Carolina, according to Sheriff Quentin Miller. Hundreds are still missing.
Petree, who was in the rubble talking to people earlier Monday, said the people there are just awestruck. The devastation is unimaginable. And for those who don’t have to imagine — those who heard the freight-train-sounding rush of water and woke up to their neighbor’s homes in the water — it’s incomprehensible.
At 6:45 p.m., after circling above the coordinates listed on Petree’s index card, finding no place to land and seeing no people waving us down, we land on a bridge next to Bat Cave Volunteer Fire Department between the demolished Chimney Rock and Gerton , the next unincorporated community west. The makeshift landing pad is marked with two orange Xs. The next bridge over is marked with black, capitalized words: DO NOT LAND.
The people who asked for diapers and baby food aren’t there, but one bleary-eyed volunteer firefighter with muddy camo boots and a gun in his waistband is. He’s with a few others.
Their eyes are all the same. Wide open, glazed, processing the monster storm that hit their town — one once dubbed a “climate haven” by some for its long distance from the coast and relatively high elevation.
“Everyone is gone,” says Marie O’Neill, a butterfly-booted woman who lives on a slope above the fire department. “The people, the animals.”
We don’t have time to stay long.
She waves as we take off, the setting sun shielded by clouds — remnants of the storm that’s passed and plagued the state.
We fly back over the ruin and land back in Hickory at 7:27 p.m. Inside one of the airport’s rooms, 50 volunteers — pilots, runway golf cart drivers, regular people — eat pizza and hot dogs when a director comes in.
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s niece is out there, somewhere. She asks who is certified to fly at night. One person is. Two people are needed.
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