Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest
qcnews.com
qcnews.com
It's extremely common for disaster response and search & rescue teams to ask random volunteers to stand down and stop trying to "self-deploy" and help on their own.
First, it's inherently a more dangerous airspace than usual, given the huge numbers of aircraft flying around, lots of low level flying, and degraded communications and other networks.
Second, just keeping coordination between all the different units, groups, volunteers, and aircraft in a mass disaster like this is a huge undertaking. There are dozens of aircraft, hundreds of distinct organisations down to local fire departments and volunteer groups, and thousands of people all of whom have to stay reasonably organised to ensure everyone who needs to be rescued is. Which is why as far as possible it's best to use only the volunteers who have not only trained in the relevant communication and coordination protocols but actually practiced them at least once. If that group is overwhelmed then they look outside and bring on others through established and expedited procedures so that they don't jam up the works.
This is one guy and his helicopter, which in the greater scheme of things isn't so bad. But imagine it's 20, 30, or a 100 all doing what he's doing.
His mistake was only coordinating with some local firefighters, and believing that was enough. But they're not in charge of air operations. He should've approached the relevant air operations cell for South Carolina, or gone via one of the established volunteer organisations for pilots with their own aircraft that have pre-existing relationships with the Air Force and other organisations involved in rescues and disaster response, and are prepared to take in new volunteers and use them effectively.
Agree that the article is inherently (and self consciously) biased, having only one side’s account. But I’m training to be a pilot and I know quite a few people in SAR. The fire chief should have used, if not the pilot, the helicopter.
The fire chief should have directed him to the organisation coordinating volunteers with their own helicopters, the Carolina Emergency Response Team, but it's possible he didn't know about it.
Sure. But it’s easier to find a pilot than a helicopter in a disaster. My point is threatening the pilot with arrest and sending him and his chopper away makes no sense.
You can see this in other chaotic situations, such as war. Command and control structures work great until they get overwhelmed by too many events on the ground, at which point they completely gridlock.
Why don't you consider they may be incompetent as an option?
Also, if you don't want to deal with local fire chiefs who don't know everything about the air operations, maybe don't approach them first and instead approach the actual units and organisations that are coordinating the air response.
Incompetence is the default state of every human organization. You rather need proof of competence not to assume it.
Emergency and disaster response organisations always ask people not to just rock up and do their own thing, but to go via the correct channels when volunteering for help. It's not an ego thing.
The one that was not yet deployed?
Then why was a no-fly zone set up? That sounds pretty counter-productive?
That's why it's so important as a volunteer to approach the organisations, units, groups, etc who are set up to accept and onboard volunteer help.
I think the most likely answer is a small town bureaucrat had to prove that he's in charge, and now they're trying to do some damage control.
I agree he was probably having a stressful day, but if his default response to stress is to threaten to put a man in a cage, then he should not have authority.
Or contacted one of the organisations listed here: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/4829
CTRL-A and CTRL-SHIFT-DELETE
All the people clamoring to defend the lame fire chief against the defend just don’t get it.
This a world-class disaster area and if someone is willing to risk their own safety to get supplies to people in imminent threat of perishing themselves… that’s a good thing. Life isn’t a 0-risk game, and definitely not in an insane disaster area.
Except its not "their own safety".
If the guy crashes, or runs out of fuel, or has a mechanical fault, or, or .....
What happens then ?
Oh yeah, that's right, the professionals have to come scoop up the remains.
Its all fun and games playing the hero, until the fun stops.
None of that is part of the regular FAA-regulated private pilot training syllabus.
But also I suspect his insurance company would have a thing or two to say about operating in disaster areas.
Asking volunteers to not just rush in and do things themselves without coordinating via the proper organisations set up for that purpose is standard for every disaster. For instance: https://matadornetwork.com/change/why-you-shouldnt-run-out-t...
Part of your training as a pilot is learning how to find out about stuff going on in the area where you plan to fly and who to contact about flying in that area.
If you don't know (or have forgotten) how to do that, you should not be flying a plane. Full stop.
EDIT: For some reason I can't reply to to the commenter below who pasted "met with multiple law enforcement officers and first responders".
Those are not people responsible for airspace access and airspace management, and the pilot should have known that. Its 101-basics stuff.
Meeting with law enforcement and first responders about airspace is about as useful as fart in a spacesuit.
In response to "followed all FAA regulations", well he would not be threatened with arrest if he had .... I suspect there is far more to the story than the one-sided article lets on !
He did contact local officials and coordinate with them. Why didn't these local officials point him in the right direction?
Edit in response to your edit: he also contacted the airport and followed all FAA regulations.
2nd edit response: so the fact that the assistant fire chief threatened to have him arrested implies his guilt? No one has ever been threatened with arrest without having broken a law?
I’m sure the victims on the ground have a different opinion, but thank you for chiming in on their behalf.
On defense of the Pilot, it’s awfully hard to coordinate with some random nobody power-tripping beaurocrat in a disaster area with no power, water, or standard communication in play.
As a reminder this occurred the day after the storm.
I don't care if its the day of the storm, the day after or 50 years after.
The rules and laws of aviation do not cease to operate just because there has been a major storm.
In fact quite the opposite, they deserve to be far more rigorously adhered to and enforced because of the greater risk.
Quite the opposite, emergencies tend to suspend a lot of laws and regulations that aren't fundamental in deference to lack of time demanding that actions be swift and effective.
I mean, I have no clue who is at fault here. But cutting the boring fire chief trying to coordinate the mess some slack might be good.
This smells of righteous social media outrage.
As far as this story can tell us, things were going swell (as swell as a disaster area could be) until McBureaucrat came in and demanded he be worshipped. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
If anything, if we are going to guess personality, it is some sort of company level sergeant type that rather uphold disciplin, order and chain of command no matter what.
I really dislike military type of leadership and command. I am sick of it. But this is the time for it. Like, just do what the fire chief says and chill.
Just doing stuff is usually bad in situations like these.
Chill and wait for orders and don't undermine the authority of those in charge in a messed up situation.
And also don't instigate in social media about it...
The last thing you want when trying to do major emergency response is to add an air disaster or two to your existing emergency. Even if lack of coordination doesn't lead to a crash, it can disrupt other rescue operations.
There are any number of valid reasons from liability to the inability to vet the pilot's skills and licenses to the danger of introducing a pilot unfamiliar with the current SOP/LOPs.
I listened to a lot of reporting about a major fire in my country, and one of the things I learned was that ways of working that run like a well-oiled machine for minor and medium-sized disasters can completely fall apart in a large disaster.
For example, a rescue team is dispatched to Family A, but on their way they encounter Family B who are in imminent danger, and rescue them instead. Or maybe the rescue team are from a few towns over, all the signs are fucked, and they rescue Family C from a different street and think they've got Family A.
Well, if it's a medium-sized disaster you can coordinate this stuff on a whiteboard. But in a large disaster, where lots of irregular stuff is going on? Very easy for an update to get missed - then the whiteboard says Family A has a rescue team on the way, and the next free rescue team gets dispatched to Family B or C's empty home.
On the other hand, the whiteboard system is what you and your team know best, it's served you well in fires in low-rise buildings etc in the past, and the middle of a major incident doesn't seem like the time to adopt a different system. I can easily understand clinging to a familiar system even when it's not working very well.
So I can understand why, even when the person coordinating the response arguably should have integrated a volunteer with a helicopter, they might not have been ready to.
Otherwise, they would have restricted the airspace on an ongoing basis: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/foa_html...
They did it temporarily, and once. At loggerheads with other rescue efforts.
>Random individuals flying their drones are a hazard to rescue helicopters and other aircraft.
Is it so really? In Ukraine war a lot of de-facto random individuals from both sides are flying a lot of drones without pretty much any coordination and control system and in combat conditions, much tougher than civilian emergency, and mostly in FPV mode without direct LOS, frequently at night, yet no drone-helicopter/aircraft collisions have so far been reported (and everybody watching the aircraft and helicopter losses very closely)
There are several approaches to this problem, but it usually requires that the drones are all running compatible control and communication software. e.g. [0] https://www.flytbase.com/blog/drone-disaster-relief
> Is it so really? In Ukraine war a lot of de-facto random individuals from both sides are flying a lot of drones without pretty much any coordination and control system and in combat conditions, much tougher than civilian emergency, and mostly in FPV mode without direct LOS, frequently at night, yet no drone-helicopter/aircraft collisions have so far been reported (and everybody watching the aircraft and helicopter losses very closely)
Those people aren't random, they're part of organised military forces and are part of command and control networks. Troops do reduce certain types of drone activities when they're informed that their own aircraft will be overlying their positions. And that's even though both sides are flying comparatively few helicopter sorties at the front lines because of the constant threat from air defence.
As an aside, there have been collisions, at least one of which was intentional.
these C&C networks don't control drones in the air. And most the people in the both fighting forces are mostly random ones really. If they got drones, frequently bought themselves or donated by volunteers - they fly them, if not - then not.
> Troops do reduce certain types of drone activities when they're informed that their own aircraft will be overlying their positions.
I don't know where you heard this. From what i heard - they frequently even can't discern whether this is their drone or an enemy's one.
I didn't say they did. Being part of command and control networks means that troops are informed of air operations by their own side over radio or other communications channels.
> I don't know where you heard this. From what i heard - they frequently even can't discern whether this is their drone or an enemy's one.
From acquaintances and friends in the Ukrainian armed forces on or near the front lines.
If they don't want people "getting in the way" then they have to be actually doing something. They are simply costing lives due to ego politics. They should be helping coordinate not shut down help.
There are plenty of military helicopters, but in several areas the available landing zones aren't large enough, which is why the CERT is coordinating small private helicopters.
I myself had to ignore all the usual “stay off the road, don’t drive under or over downed trees and power lines” to get relatives out of Asheville.
In times of crises, these rules, however well intentioned, are just suggestions. If you understand why the rules are there, how to safely inform them, and need to break them, break them.
Sometimes there just isn’t a bull on the other side of Chesterton’s fence no matter how much people might think there is.
> His mistake was only coordinating with some local firefighters, and believing that was enough.
This was my same thought. Also, if it's only half-coordinated and an accident happens, who pays for the damages or the lost human lives?
I know the intentions were exemplary and that they are heroes, but one first has to zoom out a bit.
Some Bigwigs talking over people with local knowledge, ignoring advice, wanting to press their processes and rules...
Most people, after a couple of days were all aligned 'Leave the money and the equipment, we will do the rest.'
Also don't forget the basic motto of First Responders .... "don't become a statistic by adding yourself to the count".
The fact of the matter here also is that law enforcement, first responders, search and rescue etc. etc. do this sort of stuff all day long every day. They have training, they have well established lines of communication, etc. etc.
One guy and his helicopter trying to be a hero is, sadly, only likely to cause more problems than fix them. The professionals on the ground would likely rather have random civilians "out of their hair" instead of hanging around "trying to be helpful".
If the civilian professionals have trouble keeping up, they have lines of communication up to the military for backup support.
I know it sounds harsh. But really, in a first-world country like the US, just leave it to the professionals and the well established protocols.
If officials want civilians out of their hair they can declare a temporary flight restriction, which in fact someone did declare 30 minutes after the discussion with the fire official. (And it is strongly implied it was the fire official)
That said, some of the people on the ground actually promised to shield him; so there appears to have been a rather strong organizational split wrt attitudes towards pilot assistance. [1]
Note that a TFR MAY include coordination contact information. Which this one apparently did: "CTC ASHEVILLE APP WITHIN 20NM ON 125.8" (from the map summary in the September 29 screenshot in the article).
The balance of your thesis does seem to come under pressure with the Mon 30 Sept screenshot; which shows the TFR lifted and multiple aircraft (said to be helicopters) working in the area.
This is based just on information in this article. You might be basing your opinion on more general information?
[1] "...but we can tell you if you come back with the victim, we’ll have you a designated landing spot and we’ll make sure they don’t come over here"
Seidhom said he tried to de-escalate and asked the official for instructions on how to communicate with the Lake Lure Fire Department while he was flying a rescue mission near the town. Seidhom said the fire official ordered him to leave and not come back.
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This sounds a lot more like ego to me. A rational person would have pointed him to the right people to coordinate with, not keep escalating to the point of threatening him with arrest if he goes to pick up his co-pilot (his son) who was still on the mountainside.
And this is ESPECIALLY bad with the Carolina Emergency Response Team so DESPERATE for civvie copters (because the military ones are too heavy).
Yet the guy went through each and every hoop to cooperate and coordinate properly with the ATC (which should dispell all the "100 planes in the air" worries) and the local IC (that set up a landing zone for the guy and gave him the frequencies to coordinate).
I understand that there may be some vigilantes that would ignore the rules and procedures but this guy with his previous expertise in fire and rescure went through all the stages to help.
The local fire chief was either on a power trip, or had a knee-jerk reaction to out of org help (which IMO disqualifies him from being an effective IC capable of using the available resources to prioritize human life). It is very clear that the guy was absolutely ready to cooperate according to the rules that the chief would set, but ordering him to not go back for his son is ABSOLUTELY a power trip.
My point being this is a clear failure of the IC (the fire chief in this case)
There are different ATCs and areas of responsibility. The only one the article says he spoke to was the Tower at an airport in Charlotte, over 100km away. They're only going to have been concerned with what he was doing in the immediate airport vicinity as crossing traffic, not where he was going to and what he'd be doing there.
There obviously wasn't a no-fly zone over Charlotte at the time, so the ATC would not have had to disseminate the info during their communications. Instead, that would be reflected in NOTAMS issued by the FAA.
(I'm *not* asserting if what the NC people are doing is necessarily wrong in context–I don't know enough about air-traffic control to know that).
On one hand, yes, they save some people. On the other hand, they are not on the official search grid rosters, don't tend to take directions well from the authorities, and can cause all sorts of havoc. They can make it harder to find people in need. In fact, when they don't coordinate with the authorities, they end up wasting the experts' time (who may end up covering the same ground) or, when they do coordinate, people in need end up getting missed because the random people who show up to help are not properly trained to conduct searches.
Finally, as this news article shows, these folks have a tendency to go to the media and present themselves as heroes. You very rarely see that from the official search and rescue/recovery teams.
Disaster response is extremely psychologically and emotionally stressful. You may ride a wave of adrenaline while you're out in the field, but most staff end up rotating out (by mandate) after several days to protect them. Even among professionals, there are a lot of people who end up relying on alcohol to ease their minds.
Most importantly, the dignity of the people being rescued/recovered is important. It is all about those people, not about the hero rescuers. They are literally in trauma and can be dangerous and/or in need of urgent help, medical or otherwise. It is desperately unfair to them when somebody untrained, with a "cowboy" attitude, shows up and flips the script. Or, even worse, the cowboy crashes his helicopter and there's one more person who needs to be rescued.
Not all people who randomly show up in their helicopters or John boats are like this, but enough of them are to sow chaos. And look at us all wasting time talking about this guy who feels slighted because his unprofessional help was refuted. It's the same story every time.
Let the professionals do their job and, at the very least, let them coordinate the volunteers who show up to help. It sounds like a great idea for everybody to show up in their helicopter, but trust me, it's not.
How about this: get out of their way. Or even better: clear their paths. Or conduct your own operations and don’t worry about it.
[0] https://spherestandards.org [1] https://spherestandards.org/handbook/editions/
Funny you say that, because the government wants a monopoly on "help" and is willing to use lethal force to enact it.
Those rescued by the cowboys did not expressed that. Sure, everyone prefers the professionals to show up, but if they don't, because they are overwhelmed by the situation, I surely would be glad, if an "cowboy" comes instead to pick me up.
Troublemakers in search for attention are to be kept away for sure, but those who are reasonable and willing to help and have a helicopter, like the person from the story, are probably open for an official way to help. Not what happened here.
I would take anything he said with a huge grain of salt.
I do and I did not like that reporting, but if the facts are somewhat right, the arrest threat from wanting to at least still pick up his left behind son is way over the line, of anything reasonable.
If the local chief decides to send a free helicopter away is one thing, but then sending the father away while failing to provide another extraction is just a sign of not being able to handle the situation.
Ideally, there would have been an easy process for volunteers to get involved. They might have told him to come, but with the son back at home.
Probably, but that's literal survivorship bias: those who died due to a badly-performed search have nothing to say.
In other words, sources please.
Search and rescue people get upset by these people not following authority, but that’s a standard response anytime amateurs show up to something. It’s the same dilemma of allowing regular people to serve food to large groups. Sure, discourage it if there is enough actual food to serve the survivors, but you sure as hell shouldn’t be doing it when the alternative is starvation.
The same applies when you have dudes like this pilot who was flying where nobody else was. The people out there had 0% chance of rescue without him. Grounding “the cowboy” is just an authority flex.
There are official channels for getting volunteers trained up for these situations. The untrained folks have a tendency to make things worse, which is why the authorities usually don't want them there.
That's why you have proper volunteer organisations so that volunteers can be vetted before running around the disaster area.
Spoiler: They ended up dragging the husband through the (raging, debris filled) river after he hiked himself down the mountain, instead of letting the helicopter pick him up. Not 24-hrs later, they were asking for private helicopter pilots to go do exactly the same sort of thing. According to the video above, the pilot had checked in with incident command at the Hickory regional airport, and they were only selling fuel to pilots who joined the rescue mission with them. The town manager in this video is stretching to defend the fire chief.
It’s also a disaster zone beyond anything some keyboard warriors need be pontificating on.
Ive personally had to deliver diesel into Asheville to rescue family with a two month old over the weekend. You might see some nice PR photos coming out from the last day or two of Chinooks and cargo drops but at the time this incident occurred, there was nothing going on out there. If you didn’t know someone who could help you, or make it to a central place point you were SOL.
Here and today, now, even with assets in place it just isn’t enough.
Respectfully, please get your facts straight here. The ignorance of HN is well on display in this thread.
https://www.qcnews.com/news/investigations/sc-pilot-flying-v...
Depending on the details of aviation airspace, it’s possibly also the place of work of anybody with a pilot’s license and a suitable aircraft. General aviation allows massive leeways.
I saw it online after Trump was shot- "How could the top protection organization in the world fail so flagrantly? The shooter must have had inside help." Some people cannot accept that the world is less safe than it really is. It could be the cause of some of these comments in this thread but I don't know if it's the whole cause.
I don’t know why we keep having to relearn this lesson over and over again. Your life does not matter to them; their primary concern is their preserving their power.
I wish there were a solution, but I guess it will have to wait until the dollar collapses and the government weakens. I do believe that using a non-governmental currency, preferably an encrypted one, will free the people.
So no, not strange at all.
We've got people repeating (false, AFAIK) reports that "supplies are being confiscated!" but as yet I haven't seen major media saying "cannibalism!"
The most pernicious propaganda on this one is going to be "its not worth rebuilding." Its going to take major effort to pry some of the rednecks out of their ancestral mountain homes but there's apparently a lot of people ready to begin already.
Edit: Indeed they are being used and saving lives! Get on it HackerNews :)
No one is saying abandon all law here, that’s a straw man
If the gods decide one day it's his turn to be fucked sideways, I shall have no sympathy.
Do I hope I'd react better than this guy in the same situation? I sure do. Am I sure that I would, given the context of what is currently happening? Not really.
Nobody predicted this kind of damage. These were not idiots who ignored warnings. These are people who were hit with an unprecedented natural disaster and if you had called them idiots outloud around here you may end up with a broken nose.
Airbnb renters shouldn't be going into mountains during storms in general. Why do you keep bringing them up though? What percentage of the people stranded, dying, and dead are you ascribing to short term renters? I would be astounded to discover if it was more than 5%.
How about reading comments you reply to? Anyway, I’m done with this bad faith exchange.
Edit: Thanks for the shadow edit changing your comment entirely after my reply, making a bad faith exchange worse. Why do I keep bringing AirBnB renters up? Maybe because I read the article before commenting and it’s what the particular incident is about?
I won’t further change my reply even if there are more shadow edits.
I would love to hear why you think a big portion of the people impacted are AirBnB tourists, or are you just going by what you see in the news?
The severity of the situation leading up to the storm wasn't lost on me. We need to understand how people didn't get the message, or didn't believe it if they did get it, or got it and believed it but didn't have an option to leave. Those people didn't have to get stranded.
A friend has a kid in a school in Boone. The school didn't officially close until the storm was almost over them. My friends kid wasn't going to leave because they didn't want to miss a test. My friend pulled their kid out of their apartment in the middle of the night as the flood waters started rising. My friend knew what was happening, but the school officials didn't? That kind of ignorance is excredible dangerous.
The NWS forecast record flooding about 36 hours (!) before the storm hit. They only issued a flood watch shortly before everything became unpassable. Perhaps it was unavoidable, but the NWS has some serious explaining to do.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/10/04/helene...