Like clockwork, one private plane after another taxied Thursday down the runway of a small regional airport in North Carolina to a hangar, where volunteers loaded them up with food, water, medicine and other badly needed basics.
Thirty or so minutes later, those planes were back in the sky and ferrying supplies from Concord-Padgett Regional Airport to communities across the flooded region, many of them almost completely cut off from the world by Hurricane Helene.
“Yesterday, we were moving so fast we were beating the turnaround times at O’Hare,” said coordinator Shaun Carroll, referring to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. “We were moving.”
Carroll is a member of Operation Airdrop, a relief organization founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that enlists pilots with private planes and helicopters to deliver supplies to people stranded in isolated areas due to natural disasters.
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In the past two days, 350 supply flights by fixed-winged planes have taken off from the Concord airport, Carroll said. Another 215 supply flights using helicopters have taken off from Hickory Regional Airport, which is about 60 miles northwest of Concord.
“The amount of supplies that have been donated, the number of pilots who have shown up with their own planes and at their own expense, has been amazing,” said Carroll, 36, of Durham, North Carolina. “Some of the pilots have been flying in with their planes already packed with supplies.”
Hurricane Helene
Pilot Gerald Herbert, 60, who lives outside of New Orleans, said his Cessna 172 four-seater was already packed to the gills Thursday when he landed at Concord.
“I bought everything from baby wipes to underwear to Pop-Tarts and Animal Crackers for the kids,” he said. “I also got flushable sani-wipes, $120-worth of Band-Aids, Benadryl, Advil, you name it.”
A veteran photojournalist who currently works for The Associated Press, Herbert was in Florida last week covering Hurricane Helene when it made landfall and began its march north through Georgia and into the Carolinas.
“I’ve covered at least 20 hurricanes in the last 10 years,” Herbert said. “I had just gotten home and was planning to use this window of time to take a bike trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Then this happened.”
Herbert said that as he watched the reports of devastation emerging from western North Carolina, he knew he had to act. He said the region "is dear to my heart," especially Blowing Rock, a town 110 miles north of Concord, where he and his wife are thinking about retiring.
“When I saw how much damage the storm was doing up here, I just couldn’t sit still. I have a plane, I have the time, I have a credit card. I had to do something,” he said.
Shortly after landing in Concord, Herbert was dispatched on his first Operation Airdrop mission to another hard-hit area, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
“I expect to make two to three runs today,” he said.
Ryan Holt, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist from Niagara, Wisconsin, said he learned of the effort while visiting a website frequented by private pilots.
"Then I started seeing some of the pictures of the devastation in western North Carolina," he said. "It's unimaginable."
Holt, who owns a Cessna 182, said he flew into Concord late Wednesday and was dispatched Thursday to deliver a planeload of supplies to Banner Elk, a remote North Carolina town more than 130 miles north.
"It was some challenging flying," said Holt, who has flown supply missions for other charity groups. "I landed on a private airstrip that was opened to us by the owner."
Holt said volunteer pilots are not allowed to fly missions at night for safety reasons.
"But I have to say, this has been such a positive experience," he said. "The people who organized this operation put their heart and soul into this. It was a total effort on their part. We're doing something good here."
Thursday was the fourth straight day at the airport for Carrie Lee, a volunteer who works as a corporate flight attendant. She spent much of the day in a hangar, sorting through supplies destined for delivery.
"Today what was needed was medical supplies, and we had to scramble when we realized we were short," said Lee, 47, of Cornelius, North Carolina.
Lee said she and two other volunteers got into their cars and raced to the supply drop-off area in in the parking lot of the Concord Walmart. They found what they were looking for, loaded their cars and raced back to the airport to get them onto a plane.
"This can be pretty physical work, so it's pretty tiring," she said. "But it's very satisfying. There's some good people in this world."
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