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Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

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Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#91

Post by fleabagmange »

_djo_ wrote: post #45
sethammons wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have it handy. Caught a tiktok last night of a separate helicopter pilot. It is not one guy either. There are several private choppers trying to help. The one I heard, he had rescued a newborn and an older woman on oxygen. Both would otherwise be dead now. He says there are people with makeshift SOS markers and simply not enough public helicopter help. Apparently the rescue effort is focused on clearing 10 to…

There is an organisation, the Carolina Emergency Response Team, that's coordinating private helicopters for the response. That's who he should've approached from the start, and according to the article he's flying for them now. 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.

You’re saying this well after the fact. This incident occurred in the immediate after math of the storm when these fancy government agencies were still asleep at the wheel.

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.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#92

Post by lukan »

jquery wrote: post #81
lukan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Is it? He was simply told not to fly in that area anymore. Either his son was fine in which case no big deal, or his son wasn't fine in which case he was creating more people who needed to be rescued.

The son was left there on a mission agreed with local official staff to rescue a person of greater need, which otherwise would have been needed to rescue anyway.

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.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#93

Post by _djo_ »

kortilla wrote: post #63
nrjames wrote: post #41

I've spent a significant amount of time working in disaster response. In the US (and probably elsewhere), you have "Disaster Cowboys." These are people who are untrained but fancy they know better how to do things than people who have spent their lives training for these types of scenarios. Picture 1000 people showing up with their pickups and John boats following Hurricane Katrina. Or, imagine the Coast Guard conduc…

This is a bunch of gatekeeping with “yeah, they save lives, but might cause harm”. Has anyone actually done analysis to determine if a bunch of amateurs is actually a net negative? 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, discour…

Do you not think that, if every disaster response and search & rescue organisation is saying the same thing about people just rocking up to get involved without the right coordination, that they might have a reason for it rather than just 'gatekeeping'?

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#94

Post by traceroute66 »

fleabagmange wrote: post #85
traceroute66 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how should the pilot have known who to contact 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…

> If you don't know (or have forgotten) how to do that, you should not be flying a plane. Full stop. 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 t…

> 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.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#95

Post by lukan »

probably_wrong wrote: post #84
lukan wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is desperately unfair to them when somebody untrained, with a "cowboy" attitude, shows up and flips the script. " 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…

> Those rescued by the cowboys did not expressed that Probably, but that's literal survivorship bias: those who died due to a badly-performed search have nothing to say.

But those investigating that would have?

In other words, sources please.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#96

Post by blank429384jf »

sethammons wrote: post #49
oefrha wrote: post #19

While the brave men should be applauded, can I vent my frustration about these victims, who decided it was a good idea to stay alone in a mountain AirBnB in the possible path of an incoming hurricane (I won’t even say this if they actually lived there)? It’s not like the hurricane came out of nowhere, there was plenty of advance warning. Good people sometimes die trying to rescue these idiots. Oh and there’s also a 4…

This is a mountain area with regular residents that is over five hours of driving from the ocean. They expected a couple inches of rain. They didn't expect 20 inches and a dam to break. 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…

A couple inches? NOAA was forcasting record flooding days before the storm. Local news in the Triangle were showing pictures from the 1916 Asheville flood and saying this storm was going to be worse. There were mandatory evacuation orders all over.

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.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#97

Post by fleabagmange »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #42

I don't think in a crisis you should throw out all laws and rules. Sometimes engineering managers (CTOs) make that mistake too.

And sometimes, in a crisis, it’s ok to skip formal processes to get back online.

No one is saying abandon all law here, that’s a straw man

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#98

Post by fleabagmange »

voidUpdate wrote: post #83
fleabagmange wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a place of work. It’s America. 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 yo…

It is the place of work of the disaster recovery people, who have established communication channels and procedures. If there is literally nobody coming to help you, then it may be reasonable to go ahead and do it yourself, but it feels incredibly unwise to do it if there are already people trying to do things

Yes and at the time there was no one coming to help. This incident didn’t occur yesterday, it occurred immediately after the storm in a town that is, to this day, unreachable.

Respectfully, please get your facts straight here. The ignorance of HN is well on display in this thread.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#99

Post by traceroute66 »

fleabagmange wrote: post #90
_djo_ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should've approached the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, perhaps: https://www.scemd.org/recover/volunteer-and-donate/ Or contacted one of the organisations listed here: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/4829

He was an S.C. Pilot flying into NC, and for what it’s worth the area he was flying supplies into was, to put it in desktop GUI terms 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 g…

> if someone is willing to risk their own safety

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.

Re: Pilot flying Helene rescue missions in NC threatened with arrest

#100

Post by fleabagmange »

traceroute66 wrote: post #94
fleabagmange wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't know (or have forgotten) how to do that, you should not be flying a plane. Full stop. 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 t…

> 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.

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