On September 27, my father’s birthday, a devastating storm- Hurricane Helene- cut a swath of destruction through six states, with the most damage occurring in western North Carolina. Many residents of western North Carolina didn’t even have flood insurance. With good reason. The area wasn’t considered a flood zone.
I’m sure almost everyone reading this has seen the heart wrenching videos, of residents reporting how they witnessed close family members being washed away. How they’d lost their homes. Lost everything. But most significantly, how they’d witnessed, or experienced themselves, FEMA, local law enforcement, and the National Guard, doing all they could to prevent rescue efforts. If this seems incomprehensible, it is. Untold numbers of average, good hearted Samaritans showed up, ready to help out their fellow citizens. And the “authorities” prevented them from doing that. One guy flew his own helicopter to rescue an elderly couple in the mountains. He left his co-pilot, who was his son, behind as he took the woman down first (he didn’t want to have too much weight in the craft). Law enforcement threatened to arrest him if he went back up and rescued her husband, and picked up his son. As Howard Cosell used to say, “Hard to believe!”