#138 Aerial Recovery - The Hurricane Helene Disaster

Summary

Shawn Ryan Show – Episode #138: Aerial Recovery - The Hurricane Helene Disaster

Hosts:

• Shawn Ryan: Former U.S. Navy SEAL, CIA Contractor, Founder of Vigilance Elite
• Guests:
  • Charlie Kebaugh: Chief Development Officer at Aerial Recovery
  • Jonathan Howard: Master Sergeant, Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit, Impact Operations Lead at Aerial Recovery

Release Date: October 10, 2024

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1. Introduction and Guest Background

Shawn Ryan welcomes Charlie Kebaugh and Jonathan Howard to discuss their pivotal roles in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. Charlie, with a decade-long Air Force Special Warfare background and founder of the Vidar Group, leads Aerial Recovery’s mission to aid veterans and combat human trafficking. Jonathan, a seasoned combat controller and successful businessman, spearheads impact operations, leveraging his extensive military and entrepreneurial experience.

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2. Initial Response to Hurricane Helene

[00:10] Shawn Ryan outlines the dire situation following Hurricane Helene, expressing skepticism toward mainstream media reports and highlighting the guests' firsthand experiences on the ground.

[03:23] Charlie Kebaugh explains their initial positioning in Tallahassee, Florida, and rapid deployment to Perry and Steenhatchie to ride out the storm:

"We pre-positioned in Tallahassee... worked hand in hand with local law enforcement and firefighters."

[03:43] The team overcame infrastructural challenges in Steenhatchie, collaborating seamlessly with local officials without bureaucratic hindrances:

"Everyone worked very well together. Information was shared, resources were shared."

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3. Establishing Command and Overcoming Obstacles

[06:10] Jonathan highlights the inadequacies of the National Guard, emphasizing their team's self-sufficiency:

"They weren't trained or equipped. We had to pull one of their LMTVs out of the floodwaters."

[07:23] The newly formed Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit's first mission involved clearing 46 miles of road within five hours, demonstrating their operational efficiency.

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4. Escalation to North Carolina and Critical Rescues

[08:11] Charlie details their swift move to North Carolina upon learning of the escalating disaster:

"Moved up to Rutherford County Airport and started knocking on helicopter doors for rescue opportunities."

[10:17] The guests recount the viral video showcasing their rescue of an 11-day-old premature baby, Mason, underscoring the lack of official aid:

"Without that civilian, that baby would be dead." [11:10]

[21:29] Jonathan shares the emotional impact of saving Mason and an elderly lady, reinforcing the necessity of their independent operations:

"If it wasn't for that civilian... that baby was dead."

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5. Confrontation with Authorities and Bureaucratic Hurdles

[31:37] The guests describe their frustration with government inaction and interference, citing the temporary flight restriction (TFR) imposed during President Biden's visit:

"You can't get authorization. It's just the most disgusting thing." [16:00]

[64:51] Charlie and Jonathan detail their encounters with local law enforcement attempting to block their aid efforts, illustrating the chaotic and uncoordinated response:

"Fifteen deputies sitting on their ass at a single lane road... they're killing these people." [64:08]

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6. Impact of Misinformation and Media Suppression

[59:15] Jonathan discusses efforts to counter misinformation, asserting the reality of their rescue missions despite media claims to the contrary:

"There are a lot of misinformation, but keep spreading it. My own video got fact-checked as false." [59:15]

[60:05] The suppression of media coverage by authorities further complicates rescue operations:

"They wouldn't let CNN videotape the disaster areas. They only allowed filming less affected zones." [60:05]

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7. Current Needs and How to Help

[52:18] The guests highlight urgent needs, emphasizing that financial donations are less impactful than direct aid:

"Money doesn't help... what they need is food, medicine, cold weather gear." [53:35]

[56:15] Charlie mentions ongoing fundraising efforts to support disaster response, encouraging listeners to donate or conduct local supply drives:

"We have fundraisers for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. You can donate or run your own supply drive." [57:59]

[58:34] They stress the importance of spreading awareness and combating misinformation to ensure effective aid distribution.

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8. Conclusion and Call to Action

Shawn Ryan commends Charlie and Jonathan for their unwavering dedication and invites listeners to support Aerial Recovery through donations or supplies. The episode concludes with heartfelt exchanges, highlighting the critical role of independent organizations in disaster response amidst governmental shortcomings.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie Kebaugh: "A logical thinker would see that scenario and go, we need helicopters or pack mules." [39:13]
• Jonathan Howard: "These people are trapped. They're dying up there." [71:21]
• Charlie Kebaugh: "We should all have contingency plans. The government's bad at business." [46:54]

Key Takeaways:

• Aerial Recovery's Mission: Providing critical rescue operations, medical aid, and supplies in disaster-stricken areas where official response is inadequate.
• Challenges Faced: Bureaucratic red tape, misinformation, lack of government support, and logistical hurdles hinder effective disaster relief.
• How to Help: Donations, supply drives, volunteering, and spreading accurate information are essential to support affected communities.

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Support Aerial Recovery:

• Fundraisers and Donations: Visit Aerial Recovery’s Instagram page for links to current fundraisers for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
• Supply Drives: Organize or contribute to care packages containing food, medicine, cold weather gear, and essential supplies.

Final Thoughts:
Charlie Kebaugh and Jonathan Howard exemplify resilience and commitment, providing a lifeline to those in desperate need during Hurricane Helene. Their experience underscores the necessity of preparedness, independent action, and community support in the face of natural disasters and governmental inefficiencies.

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Connect with Aerial Recovery:

• Instagram: AerialRecovery
• Website: Aerial Recovery
• Contact: [e-mail]

Follow the Shawn Ryan Show:

• iTunes: Shawn Ryan Show
• Reviews and Support: Leave a review on iTunes to support the show and stay updated on future episodes.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this summary are based on the podcast transcript provided and do not reflect the assistant’s personal opinions.

Transcript

[Sean Ryan]

Charlie Kebaugh, Jonathan Howard, welcome to the show.

[Jonathan Howard]

Thank you.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Thank you.

[Sean Ryan]

So you guys kind of popped up on my radar. We've been getting blown up with messages wanting us to cover, you know, what's been going on with Hurricane Helene up in North Carolina and East Tennessee. And John, we saw your video go viral and we got connected through to you, Charlie, through Mark Turner, who's a good friend of mine. And so there's been all kinds of rumors going on in the news. I don't think anybody really knows what to believe. I'm not really one to believe mainstream media anymore. But look, you guys have been on the ground there, and so I just want to. I just kind of want to cut right to the chase on what you guys are seeing down there. If any of these rumors are true about what we're hearing on, you know, from other people on the ground as far as blocking aid and what's actually going on. And then I'd like to wrap it up with, you know, what's the solution and what do you guys need and what can people do? And so I'm gonna give you guys a quick introduction here. Charlie Keeball, you are the chief Development officer at Aerial Recovery, which is a Nashville based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing comprehensive healing to veterans and first responders. At Aerial Recovery, you empower these individuals with a new mission to respond to disasters and to combat human trafficking on a global scale. Aerial Recovery's mission is to save lives and to stop evil. Prior to Aerial Recovery, you served in the Air Force Special Warfare for 10 years and was a JTAC for a 2nd Ranger Battalion in the early days after 9 11. After leaving service in 2005, you establish yourself as a business growth expert, helping two companies land on the prestigious Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the U.S. five years in a row. You're the founder of the Vidar Group, a service disabled veteran owned small business service provider that provides training to classified operators of the MQ9 Reaper. Jonathan Howard, you are a master sergeant in the Florida State Guard Special Missions unit created by Governor DeSantis and are currently the impact operations lead at Aerial Recovery. You are also a former combat controller cct. In addition to your military service, you are a successful businessman. You have sold four real estate companies and own a title company, and own a title company across Florida. You are the principal broker for the entire state of Florida for Avonste, a national vacation management brokerage. You own a successful lawn care company and build luxury homes in Florida. Last but not least, your Happiness and passion is for bird photography. And you sell all of your prints for military charity. You are both here today to share firsthand what you're seeing take place in North Carolina and more specifically what the media is not saying. So where do we start? How did you guys get involved in this?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So we were actually in Florida when the storm hit. We pre positioned in Tallahassee. Our organization linked up with John's Florida State Guard folks. We rode the storm out in a parking garage and then quickly moved into Perry, Florida and then Steinhatchie, Steenhatchie.

[Sean Ryan]

And what were you guys seeing there?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

A pretty rundown, you know, a town of not very well built structures. So, you know, no one had insurance. You know, everything they have is gone with that storm. We worked hand in hand with the local law enforcement, the firefighters. At one point we were leapfrogging the firefighters to clear the road to get from Perry to Steenhatchie. It was a great operation down there in the fact that everybody worked very, very well together. Information was shared, resources were shared. You know, we were working hand in hand with the officials.

[Sean Ryan]

There was FEMA down there.

[Jonathan Howard]

They weren't, I think I heard they were going to come like three days later or something like that. But down there there was no red tape. And for our unit, the smu, that was actually our very first mission to be activated on. And Desantis and all the Florida leadership were like, we don't really know what you guys do as operators. Just do whatever you do. And that's what we did. Like we have a great commander and former pararescue guy and he was like, we're gonna go do what others can't do and we're gonna find work and get after it. So the main mission to get down there was just clearing trees. I think my team alone, we cleared about 46 miles of road just in about five hour period. Just chainsaws, just pushing through to Perry. And then we basically hit multiple roads, linked up with aerial recovery. I should say. This is actually the first time me and Charlie actually met in person and worked together. No kid, we knew each other, we talked on the phone stuff. We live in the same area. We're always trying to link up together, but we're just, we're just busy. So our teams worked together and then we just started pushing in. Not as bad as what we have seen in North Carolina. Just because of our response with the state of Florida and the resources. No one was trying to take command and control because we had command and control. Established so that no one was fighting for it. So law enforcement, Coast Guard, everyone knew their role. No one was like, I'm the leader here. And we were able all to work together. And like, even with Ariel, we were able to work with them and just put the boats in the water and go look for people. Because the water level in Steinhatch was high when we got there at first light, it's probably what, at least chest deep in most places of water. So we either were going out by foot or we're going by boat. But you can see the water line on some of these houses. It was like 11ft. It was really, really high.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And the National Guard folks were there.

[Sean Ryan]

They were absolutely.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And God bless them, they're doing their best. They're just not trained. They're not trained, they're not equipped. So we actually had to pull one of their LMTVs out of the floodwaters.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

With a Chevy.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah. And they had. They had no equipment. They're there doing their best, but, you know, ill prepared for that type of response.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Is the Special Missions Unit, is that a new.

[Jonathan Howard]

Brand new.

[Sean Ryan]

That's brand new.

[Jonathan Howard]

When did that get established this year? January, Pretty much this year. So they started the State Guard about two years ago. And then DeSantis, Governor DeSantis basically won his own, like, JSOC unit for the state. And then we did the first selection class last October, and then the last class was in January. So it literally just got put together. Interesting. We were actually doing our weapon qualifications the week of the hurricane, so we were rushing all of our weapons qualifications. That way we could carry in the state and get deputized. And then, like, as we were doing that, we were mission prepping for the hurricane and that was our very first mission to show our capabilities, which was great because we were able to do that.

[Sean Ryan]

So is this all comprised of special operations guys or former military?

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, all former operators. Or very unique backgrounds, like K9 hand handlers, stuff like that. We have one guy who is like a fire captain, so he comes in very handy for what we're doing, like emergency missions. Yeah, he's also built like a Viking, so his physical capability is great. But pretty much everyone's either former SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Pararescue, or combat controllers, EOD as well.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, I hope we stand that up here in Tennessee.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, no, I think. I think most states are going to follow what we're doing, and I mean, it's great. We have, we even have our own fixed wings, rotary wing DeSantis is just going full blown with it.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting. We'll have to reach out to the. To Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee. So what got you guys up north from Florida? How did you get wind up in north Florida?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So John shared his position with me on his cell phone, which was a mistake, right? So now I'm tracking him. So I saw that he had made it, made his way home, and our team heard about the devastation happening in North Carolina, and we set a team up there. So I reached out to John, I said, hey, if you're home, let's roll up there. And so he said, let's do it. So we jumped in his private plane, flew up to Rutherford County Airport, and landed there and just kind of did the soft thing once we got there, which was, let's try to figure out our next move and get creative. So we started knocking on the doors of the helicopters as they landed. Hey, let's go do some rescues. Hey, let's go do some work.

[Jonathan Howard]

Literally.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding. So you guys. So you guys literally just flew out here with the plant, or he just.

[Jonathan Howard]

Flew out here with the plant. You guys both flew out here with.

[Sean Ryan]

The plan of just, hey, let's just get on the ground, figure it out.

[Jonathan Howard]

As we were driving to the airport to get in the plane, I got a text from our commander, and they're like, hey, we're being activated from North Carolina. And I was like, no kidding? Like, I'm going there right now with aerial recovery. So they're like, perfect. Go there, get intel. Because there wasn't really any kind of intel. Like, nothing was being shared. It seemed like no one really knew what was going on. It just. People were trapped and mudslides and flood. So as you said, once we landed in Rutherford, we would just go up to helicopters, and we'd be like, hey, can we get some work in with you? Like, we just need to get up in the air and see what's going on. And that's how we. My wife actually said it when we were at dinner that night. But I think an angel actually put us in contact with this guy that had the helicopter. Cause we were there trying to find helicopters, and this random guy came up to us, started talking to us that no one knew and no one has ever seen again and just completely vanished from the Earth. But he went up to this guy that owned the helicopter, and he was like, hey, I got these two guys over here. They need to get a ride in and start doing some work. And then he came over to us and was like, hey, I heard you guys need a helicopter ride. And this guy now, he's our best friend. He's amazing. He had his own private Bell 407 helicopter which holds seven people. And he was like, yeah, I can take you guys up. And that's what we did. All of our work in the entire week.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding.

[Jonathan Howard]

He paid all out of pocket. I mean, he was paying for the private pilot to fly it. He was paying for all the fuel out of pocket, man. I think he was spending like seven to nine thousand dollars a day.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. Just like in fuel in the pilot.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Zeb Hadley, National Coatings out of Wilmington, N.C. and Mark Roseman was our pilot.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Amazing.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. Like without those two, we couldn't have done what we did.

[Sean Ryan]

So what we. So I saw a video of you. I believe it went viral. It did about, you know, about some of the frustrations you were seeing on the ground. And it sounded like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounded like different government organizations were trying to take credit for saving an 11 day old baby that you gentlemen actually saved. So what is. Yeah, so I'm gonna play that video right now.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Overlay it on the, on the episode.

[Mark Turner]

I really don't want to make this video, but it is literally a matter of life and death for the people of North Carolina. So. My name is Jonathan Howard. I'm a member of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit and I'm also up here with Aerial Recovery, a non profit. I came up here on Sunday with Aerial Recovery. Before we even got activated, we flew up here and then we got activated, which is great. I have my team up here working as well. Here's the problem. I'm going to tell you everything that's happening from the ground, what I'm actually seeing. Because what they're telling you is complete on the news. And these politicians don't have a clue and they're lying. And I'll say this now, I'll say.

[Jonathan Howard]

At the end of the video, the.

[Mark Turner]

Only thing I need from this video is helicopters. If I have helicopters, I can save lives. Without helicopters, I can't reach these people. It doesn't matter how many chainsaws and trucks I got, I can't get to them. They're 10 miles in, 20 miles, 40 miles in the mountains. There's no way to get with them or even communicate with them. I am literally flying around in a civilian helicopter looking for SOS messages carved in the mud or paint on the ground. And we're dropping down and saving them. What Got me fired up about this was yesterday, me and my team did the rescue of that 11 day year old baby. And all these government officials and social media, they're showing that video, that pictures and video of that rescue and claiming that like they have some like government helped with that. And I mean it, even usa, I think it was USA Today wrote an article about it saying it was a Florida National Guard that went and got it. Like with a helicopter. No, it was me, my buddy Charlie and a civilian named Zeb with his own personal helicopter out of Wilmington, North Carolina. Like without that civilian, that baby would be dead. And the old lady we went and rescued after that, she'd be dead too because she had one day left of oxygen there. No one was going to go get them. I will tell you, when we go up in the air, I probably see 40 civilian helicopters and I might see two Blackhawks, National Guard, military, whatever they are, that's it. No one's out there doing rescues. I have my entire team up here from Florida right now and they have no ability to go rescue these people other than what they can drive to. The people that are in dire need, they're out in the mountains, they are completely cut off. Now I will say I spoke to my congresswoman down in Florida and she's a badass. She made a bunch of phone calls and now we got two contracted 60s coming up here tomorrow, which is great, I love that. But like I still don't understand why we don't have more helicopters. Like we'll get a lot of work done with that. But there's no, there's no military, there's no go, no one's doing nothing. I just, it, it blows my mind. And they're not even allowing people to see what's really going on. One of our friends yesterday, they were actually escorting CNN down at Late Lore and they wouldn't even let cnn, the sheriff department would not let them go videotape the bad areas of how destructive it is. I don't know why they don't want to show you all that, but I.

[Jonathan Howard]

Mean it is bad.

[Mark Turner]

I should also say when I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in the sheriff department and it was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was a Speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in and trying to kick us out, which I have clarified today with North Carolina politicians that reached out to me. Good on them. And they were like, that's complete. Speaker of the House has nothing. He wants you guys there. But this is the kind of political BS that is happening here right now. Like, everyone's trying to be in charge without taking any type of action. Nobody wants to coordinate with anybody. Everybody wants to pretend like they're being the hero while these people are literally dying in the mountains. And these people, like I'm saying these people are limited medication. They're running out of oxygen, and there's no one going to get them. The most effective way I have found to go find these people is by getting in a helicopter and flying down the rivers and roads and looking for SOS messages or people waving us down. And then we drop down and get them. We have all these people here. We have law enforcement, we have State Guard, National Guard. They have no way to go get these people. Yesterday when I was at the Asheville airport refueling, which, by the way, the civilian is paying all this out of his own pocket. He's not even looking for a reimbursement. I think we did four refuelings yesterday.

[Jonathan Howard]

And that was, like, just in half.

[Mark Turner]

A day of work. We're in Nashville, and I saw two Air Force helicopter 60s, and I knew they were PJs just looking at them. And I went up to him, like, hey, guys, like, what are y'all doing? And like, this is what you need to be doing. This.

[Jonathan Howard]

This.

[Mark Turner]

This how I'm finding people. And they're like, we can't go. We're waiting on Title 10 orders. And I'm like, what? They just. They can't get any authority. There's military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can't do nothing. Even my JSOC boys in Fayetteville, they.

[Jonathan Howard]

Can'T get orders to come out here. It is just the most disgusting thing.

[Mark Turner]

And they're killing these people, and I don't know why they're doing it. I don't know what kind of conspiracy. I've heard so many things. Whatever you want to come up with, but they are literally allowing these people to die in the mountains right now because we can't get helicopters. They got money for everything else in the world right now, but if they could just get us helicopters, we could fly out there and rescue these people. So I hope this video goes viral. I hope these politicians get fired. I hope people get pissed off. They'll probably kick me out of the state of North Carolina for doing this. But you know what? I don't care. Because if I can save one more life for it, it's worth it to me.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. So who got that Mission.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So we got that lead from Save Our Allies.

[Jonathan Howard]

That's right.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay, Right.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I'm sure you're familiar with those guys.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, that's Chad Robachov's guy.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

That's right. So we're in contact with those guys. Sean actually sent us the mission from Save Our Allies and it actually said a one year old baby, life or death situation. So we jumped in the helicopter. We were in Rutherford County Airport, which is about 15 minutes away. The notice had the phone number on it. So I was able to call the grandma Lisa, get her on the phone, find out if the request was still active, because by this time we'd already been on multiple missions that were dry holes. And so spoke to Lisa on the phone, she gave us the situation. Meanwhile, John's calling his counterparts on the ground and was able to get a PJ there within about five minutes. So again, you talk about the God moment of the angel connecting us there at the airport. His team just happened to be same town in the same town at the same time, five minutes away.

[Jonathan Howard]

Everything worked out the way it should have. Like, actually they were flying in with the helicopter to come grab me and him at the Rutherford airport. And the people that run the airport. Awesome. I forgot the dad's name, but Devin. Devin. And his son Tristan, his son's 13. He's been helping us out so much. His dad was in the fuel truck and I wanted to hot refuel the helicopter because, like I said, the message we got, it said life or death. And so that was basically all the intel we had on it. So I asked his son, Tristan. I was like, hey, can you radio your dad? Can you do a hot refuel? He was like, I don't think he's allowed to, but let me see. So his dad came over and he was like, yeah, we can't hot refuel. That's not allowed to do it. And I was like, I have to get this helicopter hot refueled. And he was like, what's the situation? I was like, this one year old baby's gonna die. And he was like, done. And he literally just backed up this fuel truck and just started refilling the helicopter. Me and Charlie got in it as I was coordinating with my. My P.J. paul on the ground. And then he. I sent him the address. And then like two minutes later, he's calling me. He's like, I'm here. And I was like, how are you there that quick? And he was like, I was here, like, literally in the neighborhood, just randomly, which on the map, when we were looking at it. All the roads were cut off to it. The updated maps were saying it was completely just cut from the rivers. So I don't know how he was even there, but. But he was able to stabilize the baby, get on oxygen and just getting the vitals stable. So as we're flying in, the State Guard SMU guys were there. They started the PJ started making an hlz. We found a field. I'm looking at imagery on my phone, like, we can land there, but I mean, there's power lines all around. And as we're coming in there, I mean, Mark Roseman, our awesome pilot, I mean, this isn't what he does. I mean, he flies, you know, Gulf streams around the world, and he's like putting it down the field for the very first time. In the middle of the field, you.

[Sean Ryan]

Have a fixed wing pilot flying.

[Jonathan Howard]

He's also a ring aircraft. He's like this guy had, I think he said, Over 22,000 flight hours.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

So very, very, very experienced. And he's been flying helicopters all over. But he's not used to doing like a 1/60th mission. You know, he's not dropping down in the fields and landing on rooftops. So he dropped down in that field. And we had a bunch of our SMU guys there with the baby. My buddy Byron come running out with the little. I forgot baby crib or holder. Oxygen.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Car seat.

[Jonathan Howard]

Car seat, yeah. And we basically just loaded them into the helicopter, took off, and we flew right to Mission Hospital in Asheville.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

At the same time, we had to communicate with the hospitals, let them know we were coming. Yeah, we found the radio frequency, our aircraft radio was not compatible. So we had a guy from the rear on our team actually make a phone call to the hospital, let them know that we were coming, have the doctors and nurses on standby on the rooftop waiting for us.

[Jonathan Howard]

So as we were coming to that rooftop, Mark was like, find me a place on the ground. I was spotting in the front seat looking for an hlz, and there was two helicopters parked in the HLZ so we couldn't land on the ground. And there was one on top of the roof. And it was a little bit windy, or I say it was very windy, a little bit of rain. And he was like. I was like, mark, the only place you can go is on that roof. I was like, it's pretty big. Like you should be able to put it down. He goes, I've never landed on a roof. And I was looking at the wind sock up there, and it was a direct crosswind and at that crosswind was like the top of the building for the hospital. So he was kind of nervous about it. I was like, you just gotta get it down. And as we were coming in about 10ft above, the winds were just like, I mean it was pushing us. Like it was real, real strong. But he got down. Me and Charlie hopped out with the baby. Grandma, mom rushed them inside and they had a full staff there. I mean they had probably, I think two doctors, three nurses.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Jonathan Howard]

And they just grabbed that baby and took it. And then we actually went immediately out to another mission. But a few days later they got ahold to Charlie and they sent us photos of the baby and the mom and so the baby was alive. And then at some point we're going to go visit them and just kind of like follow up with them and stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, that's amazing.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, I'm not a very big emotional guy, but like my emotions were like running very high in that mission. And then like once we actually got that baby in that doctor's hand, like I actually like wanted to cry. Like I just never, like, I just, I. It was hard to describe but like it just, it was, I don't know, it was just tugging on my heart.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, that is. You guys are fucking awesome.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. But yeah, at the time we didn't know it, but it was 11 day year old premature baby with brittle bone disease, low iron and something else that it had already been like diagnosed with.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you know the baby's name?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Mason.

[Sean Ryan]

Mason.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, I love hearing that, man.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You guys are a godsend. Who, what government organizations are taking credit for your guys work?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

It was some sort of, again, the daily, the daily updates that the Guard folks were putting out because I actually reached out to the author of the article in USA Today. Like, you write something bad, I will hunt you down and send you a nasty email. I learned that from my mom.

[Jonathan Howard]

They were saying it was like North Carolina National Guard. Nothing. Not trying to discredit them. Those guys are doing their part. But like in the video you can clearly see it's a red and gold helicopter. It's a Bell helicopter. It's not a National Guard. And they're like, oh, national guard saves 11 day year old premature baby. And I kind of saw it being spread all over social media and I was just like, y'all are disgusting. Like literally these people are out here dying. And I should say right after that 11 day year old baby, we went and saved an elderly lady who had a day left to Live on oxygen. She was cut off in the middle of nowhere. We're the first people to reach them. So how are these, how is everybody.

[Sean Ryan]

Getting in touch with you guys? Because everything we're hearing is there's no communication, there's no starlink, there's no nothing.

[Jonathan Howard]

Facebook messages direct to people like ourselves.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So that particular one, the son who was probably in his early 30s, hiked over the mountain to check on his.

[Jonathan Howard]

Family, like five miles and then went.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Back to get cell phone signal to put out a request. And so all it was was Bent Creek. I think there was an address, I.

[Jonathan Howard]

Think there was a grid or an address. And it just said like, people here need help.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And so we just flew, flew into that area, found the river, followed the river, looked for houses, and then spotted in the mud and on the road. SOS symbols.

[Sean Ryan]

That's how you guys are idea.

[Jonathan Howard]

So the cloud layer was pretty low. It was a little bit foggy, a little bit rainy. And we're looking and all the roads to this area, I'm gonna say it was probably 10 miles in, were just completely washed away, like just completely eroded. So there's no way to get in there.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, can you even tell there is a road? There was, yeah, there was.

[Jonathan Howard]

You can see there's remnants of it. There might be a little bit of it here, but it's all washed away. And as we were flying over, I actually didn't see it the first time. And then I caught my eye, I saw big white letters painted on the road that was washed out said SOS. And then probably 30 yards away from that, it was carved in the mud, probably about foot wide, sos. So I was like, hey, Mark, like, let's go down there. But it was like on a valley. The road was washed out and I'm trying to find an hlz. We actually didn't see it when we were coming in, but we crossed two power lines that we almost hit on the way out. But we literally dropped in basically like on this little small piece of concrete next to a house and a hill. And then a washed out road, which we couldn't land there because we were afraid it would collapse into the river. And then we shut down, got out, started talking to him. That's usually how we get our intel. We start talking to him, hey, what's going on? Who needs help? And they're like, oh, this guy's low on insulin. But there was a lady there and she only had about enough fuel in her generator to run her oxygen machine for about a day. Left.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And they said, she won't leave. She's not gonna leave.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

Because her whole family was there, and, like, emotions are high. Like, when they first see you, and we're the first people to reach them. I think that was, like, day four. Like, they're just like. You can see the cut kind of the color come back to their face. But they were. Everyone we kept running into. Like, them. They didn't want to leave because they thought the government would be there in a week. So they're like, oh, like, everything's gonna be okay in a couple days. Right? Like, it's day four already. And I'm like, y'all don't know how bad this is. Cause they're thinking it's just their river that's washed out, not the entire, like, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia. And we show them videos, and they're just like, oh. I'm like, you're probably not gonna have a road for two to four months. And that would kind of change their opinion on them wanting to leave. But that lady. Yeah. Go back to her low oxygen about a day left. We convinced her to get in the helicopter because we could take her son, who hiked over the mountains with his daughter as well. And then we flew him out. But, I mean, again, like, great. You know, if it wasn't for Mark, we wouldn't have been able to do that or Zeb. But as we were taking off, I just. Mark, he was like, basically, like, oh, God. He just yanked the power up, and there was a power line, like, right in front of us. We didn't even see it. And then I was like, okay, I'm looking out. And then there was another one right in front of that. So that was kind of like a big eye opener. Like, okay. Like, we really got to be switched on here because this is not a normal HLZ landing. And then even as we landed, to bring them back to their house, we had to land on a slope like this, which is something he's never done before. And we actually had some issues on that one as well. We actually thought we put the tail in the dirt because it started, like, vibrating real hard. And we were just like, oh, man, we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere. But it was just kind of like the way the angle was, and it was fine, but then we had to go back and grab them because we couldn't carry all the weight. But that's literally the kind of situations that were going on. And that. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We actually went and checked on that area about three days later.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Really.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And because we had to leave the husband of the woman, he wanted to stay and prepare the house to prevent mold. And so we came back in and checked in them a couple days later. And you could start to see the signs of the community turning on themselves.

[Sean Ryan]

Is it. So looting is starting to happen, that kind of stuff desperation animal was taking in?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

Trying to control the food, fighting for resources.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

You can see that happening then you can smell the death in that site. Pretty.

[Jonathan Howard]

You could smell it. You can smell the death out there and stuff like in the log. Cause the log piles are just. There's so many just washed up in the rivers. And they would tell us like, yeah, people are in there. They have like eight. We have eight people missing from the community. We know they're in there. And you can, you can smell it.

[Sean Ryan]

You can, you can smell the bodies.

[Jonathan Howard]

But to kind of go back to your original question on that. So we did that baby rescue, we did that elderly lady. And then I started seeing those videos kind of going out. It was the very next day, day three. And that's, that's why I, we were told as, as our unit we were going to have like support helicopters. And actually I was told I was going to have like nine helicopters, like Fortunes 360s 272s. And we're supposed to have all the support for our unit to go out there. And we weren't getting that. And then just talking to everybody else, the. They weren't getting it. And we were basically told like, you can get a helicopter if it's like life or death. And I'm just like, well, we can't go rescue these people. They're literally like a day left of oxygen, they're gonna die. So I was getting just like super frustrated. Cause I had actually coordinated like 140 person evacuation the next day out of this like nursing home. And then I had no helicopters to do it.

[Sean Ryan]

Who is they that's telling you it has to be life or death?

[Jonathan Howard]

It was coming through like our liaison officer of North Carolina. I don't know exactly who it was.

[Sean Ryan]

But some government official.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, some government official coming down through our commander. So I obviously completely jumped the chain of command and. But I don't wait around for things to happen. And I was, I was super mad. And I actually got off the phone with my, my title business partner who's an attorney, Jim Boatman. And I go to him for a lot of wisdom. He's a very good godly man. He's, you know, he's bit older than me, and if I need something, he's usually the one telling me, like, don't say those things. You know, watch what you're saying. Don't curse things like that. And he's like, you got to make a video, John. He's like, you got to do it. He was like, if these people are really like this life or death, he's like, make a video and post it. And I was like, all right. So I literally went out there to where our HLZ was and I made that video pretty angrily. And because I was just. I was disgusted with what I was seeing. I was. I was mad that they weren't giving us support. They're pretending like everyone there is getting support. But then when the 11 day baby premature video comes out of us rescuing it, they're like, look at us. We're doing everything we can, you know, now they're trying to, like, pretend like they're helping. And like, oh, it was the National Guard that did this. And I was just like, y'all have time to post on social media about what we're doing. But like, literally, if it wasn't for that civilian with his helicopter, that baby was dead. That old lady was dead. And that's when I made that video. And I was like, you know what? Whatever's going to happen to me is going to happen to me. Like, you know, you guys want to kick me out of North Carolina or whatever. I even thought, like, I was going to get a lot of backlash on that from my leadership, but they were just like, I mean, that was like, that needed to happen because we just weren't getting the support that we needed. And. And I can't tell you how much, when I made that video that day and posted it from the very next day, I think I probably had access to about 15 helicopters. We had congresspeople reaching out to us, like texting us. At 12:30 at night. I had all these feelings like, I'm bringing 18 wheelers of truckload supplies. I mean, just night and day difference, even just people like within the area of North Carolina, like Charlotte, Wilmington, they're just like, I cannot believe what's going on. We thought it was being handled and they just started rushing up there. So, like, the people that were actually living there, they started like thanking us, like, thank you for that video. And we were just kind of like, we didn't realize how big of a deal it was going to be.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And we ran into so many people on those HLZs that were there helping and they said, we're here helping because we saw what you guys are doing. We saw John's video, we saw all the things that you guys are doing and the impact you're having. So we dropped what we had and came up here to help.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

[Jonathan Howard]

The day Joe Biden flew in to Asheville, they had to put up another temporary flight restriction over, like the entire airspace there. There wasn't an exact time. It just kind of said from like, I think 11 to like 4, 4pm or something. And it wound up being, I think from 11:30 to about 3:30 or something. But by him coming there, he actually never landed. He just flew around viewing. But because of that tfr, all rescues were shut down. We couldn't go do work. And that was the very first day. We had, like, no fog, no clouds, no rain. And we were like, oh, we're going to go get all these rescues in. And this was still early in the week. I think it was Wednesday, when people were still very, very desperate. So I ran to a senator from North Carolina the day before at the Asheville Airport, and he was telling me about it. He was like, we're trying to stop him from coming here. And they were telling him, if you come here, they're not going to be able to do their job.

[Sean Ryan]

Can you tell me what senator?

[Jonathan Howard]

I don't remember his name. I don't remember his name at all.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jonathan Howard]

It was just old. He was an older guy. I know. I was told he was a Republican, had no idea who he was, but he was like, we're trying to stop him from coming here. So it doesn't slow down rescue operations because at this point it was still life or death. But he came anyways, shut us down. And me and him were literally just sitting there with our helicopter right in front of us for like three, three and a half hours. And we couldn't go do one mission during that time. And then by the time we got done, I think we only got maybe two missions in before it got dark. But it was just. That's the kind of. It's like, that's the kind of political nonsense that was happening. And then I think the next day we had fog again.

[Sean Ryan]

Did anything come of the President flying over?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Well, he didn't even remember he Flew over?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

He didn't remember.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you mean?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

He got interviewed after he landed and they said, Mr. President, what are the people in the storm states need? And his response was, what storm? Or he said, I'm trying to remember what storm you're talking about.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And then he said, oh, they have everything they need. We're very happy.

[Sean Ryan]

They have everything they need, quote, word for word.

[Jonathan Howard]

It's all over the media right now. I mean, it's everywhere. But yeah, it was just.

[Sean Ryan]

We'll pull that clip and insert it as well.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, but it's just. It was just the nonsense where it was like all crews just got shut down.

[Sean Ryan]

What do the states in the storm zone need?

[Jonathan Howard]

Mr. President, what are the states in the storm zone? What do they need after what you saw today?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Oh, the storm zone.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yes, sir.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

That's what storm is talking about.

[Jonathan Howard]

That's everything they need. We're very happy.

[Sean Ryan]

It's just a non functioning government, just like we just said. Secret Service isn't functioning, the border isn't functioning, Chinese are coming in, there's a fentanyl crisis. I mean, the outrageous spending. I mean, the only thing that seems to be functioning in this country is the irs. And hopefully that changes soon.

[Jonathan Howard]

That's the kind of stuff that was happening. I had another. It was a Coast Guard squadron commander of a Seahawk unit, a Blackhawk, and I can't remember if it was South Carolina or North Carolina. He's like, I have been requesting to go there every day and I get denied. Like, they wouldn't send them.

[Sean Ryan]

And even sending the eight, all my.

[Jonathan Howard]

JSOP buddies, all my boys at the two, four PJs and all that, they're literally right there in Fayetteville. They could not get authorization to come. Like, they'd be messaging me like, dude, we want to come. My old unit, two, three, they wanted to come. Just nonsense.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

What's frustrating is we just fought a 20 year war in Afghanistan. We have the people, we have the equipment, we have the experience to get things and resources into hard places. Every military crew that we saw, we would ask, do you have a sling load kit?

[Jonathan Howard]

No.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Sling load kit. I think we heard of one. Sling load operation.

[Sean Ryan]

Sling load kit.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

No.

[Jonathan Howard]

There's Chinooks there. There's Chinooks there.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

Like, and they just, they're not doing it.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So if you have, if you have the people, the equipment, the experience to go do it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Why aren't you doing it? Because someone has to make that decision.

[Jonathan Howard]

Tell them what the guy told Us yesterday from Fort Bragg. The assistant unit.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah. So we ran into a 82nd Airborne guy, and we were excited. We're like, oh, the 82nd's finally here. This is awesome. What are you doing? And he at first was very, you know, standoffish. And then we built some rapport with the guy.

[Jonathan Howard]

And, well, we told him like, hey, cct, tap P here. He's like, okay. Like, we kind of like, relax.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And he goes, we're just here flying 06s around.

[Jonathan Howard]

Are you serious? Their only mission the entire week is to fly colonels and VIPs around. Cause that's why they didn't have sling load capability. They literally took it off.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And Zeb. Zeb's helicopter was used to fly county officials over their county to do a damage assessment multiple times.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. The Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, he has a relationship with Zeb, the owner of the aircraft. And he would be texting him to go do missions. And I remember, I think it was like day two. I was like, why is the lieutenant governor the second highest powerful guy having you as a civilian fly officials around? And he was like, he can't get any support. He has no authority to do anything because the governor of North Carolina won't do anything. Apparently. He said he was AWOL for three days. I think that was like maybe Wednesday or something like that. But, like, you know, it's bad when the second highest powerful guy in North Carolina came and get his own helicopter to fly people around.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's put a pause on the failed government for a minute and talk about what you guys are seeing. So we will dive back into that. But from what we're hearing over here, there are entire villages and towns just completely gone. Cut off, as in like they never existed.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Is that this is a storm, that this has never happened before. Like in Florida, when we get a storm, the water rises equally and then it goes away in the mountains. It goes where it goes. And the people who make the roads evidently follow that same plan because the roads are right next to the rivers. So as the rivers rise and the water starts flowing and a bridge gets washed out, that bridge hits the next bridge. Now you have two bridges floating down the river. They hit the next bridge. So you have this big snowball effect of debris taking out all the roads. And what do we say that that one river was supposed to be. Yeah, we 6 inches wide, and now it's like 60 meters wide.

[Jonathan Howard]

It was outside Marion. The county survey guy, he said that that river originally was only 6 inches deep and about A foot wide. And then when we flew over it, I think it was probably at least 60 meters wide. So all the houses that were near there literally just got completely demolished and flushed because it was like a mudslide and just the river overflowed. So this whole area was cleared about 60 meters wide. Vehicles just tumbled into it. I think he told us at that location about 15 deaths. At that one location, about 15 people were killed there.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And so if the roads are gone and, you know, these people think when the power goes out, it'll be back on in a week, tops. Right. But the roads are gone.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And it doesn't. You can't build a road overnight. It's going to take months and months and months.

[Sean Ryan]

And a bridge is even longer.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Right.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Right.

[Jonathan Howard]

I mean, so that the lady with the. No auction that we went to our rescue. On the way over there, we've passed four bridges that were just completely demolished. Four bridges, like big concrete bridges, just gone.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So any logical thinker would see that scenario and go, well, we need helicopters or pack mules. Right? I mean, that's the only way to do it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And so you have all these supplies coming into distribution points, and then the people that can drive to those distribution points get what they need. And that's great. But you can't get those resources out to the hilltops without helicopters. And in most places you can't land. So you have to lower things down, which is why we're asking about the sling loads. So there's just no plan. That's the bottom line.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

How many people have you guys saved, do you know? Or rescued?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We. The first three or four days we had.

[Jonathan Howard]

It'S kind of. We picked. We picked up a lot of people. Yeah. The two that really stand out to me was. Was just the baby. And then, because those were just like actual life or death. But we picked up a. We picked up a lot of people. I can't remember how many, but it was. It was a lot.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you have an estimation? 150?

[Jonathan Howard]

No, we didn't. We didn't do that many. No, no, we didn't do that many. I'd probably say good. 10. 15.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah, 10 or 15.

[Jonathan Howard]

15 people like that. Because we can only get. To give you an idea, we can only do about one mission every about hour and a half to two hours.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

Because of weight and fuel. So we would, you know, fly out 20 to 30 minutes, land there, rescue them, fly them back to where they needed to go. Then we have to go refuel, get the Next mission. So at that point, it's usually about two hours.

[Sean Ryan]

What about with the. When you guys started getting more access to helicopters?

[Jonathan Howard]

That's when we started just spreading them everywhere. And then they were able to go. I mean, I don't know what each person did, but they were able to go do a lot of rescues.

[Sean Ryan]

So you guys aren't even keeping track. You're just 100% go 24 hours a day.

[Jonathan Howard]

There was no downtime, and the service is so bad. The only time I'd ever even get service was just when we're up in the air for a little bit, for a few minutes here and there, and then we're back on the ground. I mean, literally, we hit the ground, we refuel, we grab a mission, and we just go. And then we would do that basically from about. We usually couldn't get started till about 9:30 because of fog. So, you know, about 9:30 we would go, and then we usually had to stop about 6:30. So it would just be go, go, go that entire time. And we would just grab food when we could grab food and fuel where we could and just. Just make it happen.

[Sean Ryan]

So it was either personal recovery or food and water delivery.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Medicine.

[Jonathan Howard]

Medicine. A lot of Starlink? Yeah, mainly. So it started basically with, like, personnel recovery the first couple days, and then it seemed probably around maybe Thursday, the personnel recovery kind of slowed down. Everyone, like, basically got out that needed to get out. And then it went more to, like, insulin, medical supplies, EpiPens. And then once we got a pretty good hold of that, it kind of went more to, like, starlinks. Like, that way they could just message us and be like, we have an emergency. You know, this person needs this. Even the firefighters, we did a lot of firefighter drops, so we would actually, in a civilian helicopter, be picking up search and rescue crews, mainly firefighters, and flying them to their locations because they couldn't get any kind of helicopter support. So we would be these states that.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Got paid to send task forces to help. We were picking them up and moving them to different locations.

[Jonathan Howard]

I actually posted a video. We had two civilian helicopters. We landed them in the field to pick up, I think it was eight firefighters. And these are big old boys. So we had to, like, really balance the weight. But that's what I'm saying. Like, people are like, oh, why are you guys there? You don't need to be there. There's military, there's government. And I'm like, then why are we doing these missions? Like, if there wasn't a need for Us, we wouldn't be doing these missions.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

So, yeah, we were moving a lot of people. County officials, state officials, search and recovery crews. Like, we'd even drop art. We take our search and recovery guys from Ariel with a bunch of chainsaws and literally fly them to the top of a mountain, drop them off and have them work their way down. Just going, looking and clearing.

[Sean Ryan]

How are you guys delivering fuel for the chainsaws and all that stuff? Are you helicopter with them?

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, yeah, we literally load the helicopter up. I mean, a little sketchy sometimes, like carrying propane tanks inside the helicopter and stuff like that. Highly flammable, but, I mean, we would load up like five, six propane tanks and then just go up there and drop it off to people. Damn.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you have any estimation of how many people are in distress?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Somebody should.

[Sean Ryan]

Not you guys.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I doubt anybody does.

[Jonathan Howard]

Thousands. Thousands. I mean, a lot of these people are just. It's so remote, and I said the road might be washed out for 10 to 20 miles. And the terrain is impassable. Really, even by foot or even by pack mule, because it's just so steep and so wooded. You're only getting there by helicopter. I mean, it's just. Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of people stranded. And that's just in the area of western North Carolina where we are. I know it's even more widespread than that.

[Sean Ryan]

Have you guys done anything in Tennessee?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Nope, not yet.

[Jonathan Howard]

Not there.

[Sean Ryan]

Not yet.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Not for this storm yet.

[Sean Ryan]

What. You know, what are some of the. Where are you guys getting the Starlink from?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Donated. So we work a lot with global Empowerment Mission to obviously a global nonprofit, and they had a lot donated. And then we would take their supplies that were donated to them and then.

[Jonathan Howard]

Go.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Deploy them out into the field.

[Sean Ryan]

And how long. We talk about when desperation kicks in a lot on the show, and it's really hard for people to kind of fathom what that's like when the community starts looking inward. So would. But, you know, that's what happens when people get desperate, starve. You know, they're starving, they're dying of thirst, they don't have medicine. I mean, you guys know all this stuff. A lot of people don't. But what. You know, when did you. What are some of the things you started noticing? When did that start happening?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

That was about day two or three.

[Jonathan Howard]

That was about Bent Creek. Bent Creek? Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

You know, they would. They would come up to us individually and say, hey, I don't. I don't trust that guy. Over there?

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, they really would. Okay. It was getting kind of weird. They'd be like, watch that guy.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

He's kind of that guy over there by your helicopter. Keep an eye on him.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I look over and he's grabbing the. The prop, the rotor blade, pulling on it. I'm like, don't touch the helicopter, bro.

[Sean Ryan]

Are they stealing each other's supplies or anything? Like, is anything like that happened?

[Jonathan Howard]

They were saying that. I know when we try to offload that day at the helicopter like this, as we started unloading, this lady and her boyfriend just kind of randomly came out of nowhere. And they were trying to control the supplies for like the whole community. And they were like, we're like, no, no, no. Like, everyone's getting their fair share of this. But they were trying to do a lot of control stuff like that. They were even. They even told us that there was actually a bunch of illegal immigrants living there in the mountains and they would come out at nighttime and steal their stuff. One of them said that they surrounded. This was somewhere out there. But they. A guy hiked in to be with his family and he said where he was. They were actually surrounding cars at nighttime with guns and taking people's stuff and then just leaving. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn. Are you seeing communities stand together at all?

[Jonathan Howard]

Oh, yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Oh, yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. They're being very protective. Most people out there, especially in the rural places, they were all very open, caring and caring.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So they are. So a lot of them are supporting each other.

[Jonathan Howard]

Oh, yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And that's what needs to happen. Like, you can sit at home and wait for the government to show up all you want and the military to show up all you want. They're probably not going to.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And so these towns and these families, they should all have contingency plans. Like, the government's bad at business. They're just not good at business. They don't protect their resources, they don't use their resources. We know the power grid is vulnerable. Have you been to a power station?

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

You could just drive to it right now and chuck rocks at it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

They're not guarded.

[Sean Ryan]

Chain link fence, right? Right.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So you've got a government that's bad at business, doesn't protect their resources, doesn't use the resources they have. Why on earth would you think that they're going to come save you?

[Sean Ryan]

You know, I mean, I've been talking about it for a long time. You know, the government. We don't have a functioning government right now. We have a border that's wide open. We have runaway money going to every other country out there except ours. It sounds very similar to the situation in Hawaii not too long ago. It doesn't sound like these people are getting aid. I mean, you know, and, you know, NBC actually put an article out saying that this is all a big conspiracy theory. So my son on my team sent this to me. But, you know, this is part of the article. FEMA administrator Deanna or Deanne Criswell told ABC News this week on Sunday that the agency absolutely has all the resources it needs and that claims that the agency has been delivering funds to migrants are just plain false. And, you know, here's ABC News. Mayorkas warms. FEMA doesn't have enough funding to last through the hurricane season. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the agency tasked with helping communities recover from Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters does not have enough money to make it through hurricane season. So I don't, you know, once again, mainstream media is, you know, contradicting itself and likely is completely full of shit.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So FEMA's running out of money.

[Sean Ryan]

That's what it. That's what. Well, according to the secretary, fema, they're not running out of money, but, you know, Mayorkas is saying they're running out of money both with the federal government. Who the fuck are we supposed to believe here?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah, it's like anything, you know, you have money for what you prioritize.

[Sean Ryan]

And then, you know, that's another reason why I wanted to bring you guys in is because. Yeah, great. Thank you, NBC. Do you have anybody on the fucking ground over there? Probably not. Cool. Are there any government officials on the ground over there? Probably. It sounds like they're all flying around in fucking helicopters getting little photo shoots. And I'm getting fucking pissed just talking about it.

[Jonathan Howard]

But you should make a video and go viral.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, that's what we're doing right now.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

There you go.

[Sean Ryan]

But, you know, there are. There have been reports that FEMA is blocking aid and blocking supplies. Do you think, you know, I don't want to just jump on the bandwagon. Do you think there's any. Do you think they might be. If they are blocking aid and supplies, do you think that they. There's a bigger plan and maybe they just don't. They don't want people looting. And I know on the last hurricane down in, last. Was it last year when Sanibel, Fort Myers got hit? You know, I know they were keeping people from. This is for Mark Turner. They were keeping people from going to Sanibel to do aid. Because they didn't want people looting. Is it. Do you think that could be.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I don't think they have a plan. I think it's complete incompetence is the problem. Okay, so there's not some big grand scheme.

[Sean Ryan]

It's like the Secret Service.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Complete failure.

[Jonathan Howard]

I personally never saw one FEMA person the entire time I saw.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Jonathan Howard]

I never saw one. The only one. The only one I saw, I said was that, like, protection security team they brought in from California. It was like an FBI, like a raid team. They're just sitting there where the food supply was, where we would usually stop to get food. And they're just sitting there in plates, like full plates, long guns, suppressors. And they were cool. Like, we went and talked to them. Most of them were former soft guys. But I was like, why are you. I was like, what are you guys doing? And they're like, oh, we're just here on behalf of fema. And they're like, ever since Katrina, they always have, like, a security team. But I never saw, like, a FEMA official. They were just sitting there, literally, like plates on, just waiting for something. And I don't think they ever did anything. But a couple of guys, we said, the guy at the airport, Rutherford, is it, Dean, whatever. They got Devin. Devin, he had fema, like, contractors. They were. They were contracted on behalf of fema. Come talk to him about how they kind of wanted him to, like, start running operations there. But no actual FEMA officials. So I. I personally never saw any FEMA officials. The only, I think, politician I ever actually saw was Lieutenant Governor. Who else saw Pat Harrigan. He's a buddy running for Congress up there. He's their former Green Beret. I think that's it. I want to say. Yeah, there was, like, no actual, like, officials other than, like, fire chiefs and stuff like that. Like, there was no.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I don't. I don't think FEMA is evil. Like, the people who work at FEMA are not evil. I think they're just a part of a big bureaucratic system that is so large they're not efficient to get the job done.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, you know, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to demoralize anybody that is working for fema, for National Guard, for government organizations who is legitimately just trying to help. This is an issue at the highest level. And once again, those folks hopefully one day are held accountable for incompetence or malicious activity. But what are. Is there anything else when it Comes to, you know, the government's response that you guys want to cover.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Well, like I said, I think waiting for a government response should never be your first plan. You know, aerial recovery would love to work with towns to come up. You know, pick a town, let's make a town the model for self sustainment and survivability. Come up with a communication plan, come up with a distribution plan of supplies. Come up with an accountability plan for who's where, who's missing, and really build a model for other towns to build off of.

[Sean Ryan]

That would be, that would be genius. What can people help with? What do the people need the most? Is it money? Is it chainsaws, food, water, medicine?

[Jonathan Howard]

Not money.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Because they're getting $750. They're good.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. They get 730 bucks, they got nowhere to go, spend it on, you know, like they can't buy anything online. They live out in the mountains, nothing can be delivered to them.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

You didn't hear that?

[Jonathan Howard]

No. They're getting, oh yeah, Phoenix.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

The government's giving everybody $750. They can't go to an ATM to get the money out because there's no power. Yeah, they can't use their cell phones to pay with anything via phone because their phones are probably dead. And you can't buy anything from businesses because they don't have power. So, yeah, money, money for the people doesn't really help them in this moment.

[Jonathan Howard]

No, really what they need is food. There's also a concern right now for cold weather gear since winter's coming up and these people aren't going to have power. Some of them probably, maybe till the end of the year. So cold weather gear, things like that, I mean, people just bring their, their hands up there to put work in.

[Sean Ryan]

What do they bring it to?

[Jonathan Howard]

Harley Davidson in Asheville is being ran by a former soft guy and he is doing an amazing, he's running that as a soft mission. They even, they even have. I ran into one of my CCT friends who's running the HLZ out there. They're landing about six helicopters deep out there. He's controlling it. They're doing refuelings. I mean, they have chainsaws, generators, everything. They're doing probably the best we've seen, 100%. And then at Hickory, Operation Air Drop, they're doing a really good job over there controlling all these air missions. And then aerial recovery, they're out there doing, you know, we're out there doing our part as well. But I mean, really, just anywhere, just working in the food kitchens over there by the airports and resupply drops, it's huge. We had two ladies from Charlotte reach out to us and they were like, we're just gonna bring you guys meals and like, just having a hot meal and hot coffee. For first responders going out first thing in the morning, like just changes your mental mood. Just even going out made a huge difference. So just, I mean, there's work for anyone to get out there and help. But I don't really, I don't want to say right now it's a financial situation it probably will become later on when they can actually use funds. But a lot of these places, they just. The money, it's useless. There's nothing for them to use it.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

I would say the biggest need right now is heavy equipment. You gotta get these roads, you gotta get the communication or the transportation system resolved or these people are gonna starve. Like the people that we talk to, they probably have about a month.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Before they're going to be the ones calling for Nevac if they can even get a call out. You know, a lot of people didn't want to leave. It was their, their life savings to come into the hills of North Carolina and build a property without insurance. You know, everything they have is there. They're not going to leave. But you know, the evac business is going to be a lot more active as it gets colder and as the time goes on, I mean, are you.

[Sean Ryan]

Guys gonna need financial support?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We've got a fundraiser set up. I think it's raised about $800,000. So the people have been very, very generous. We just started another fundraiser for hurricane Milton. I can tell you, in the past, we responded to the Hawaii wildfires. We had people in Ukraine, we had people in Morocco. We do things globally and in most of those cases, we do it out of our own pocket.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Our founders are very, very generous people. And their mentality is God will provide.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We've got a program where we take veterans and put them through a 12 month program to heal them and then train them and give them purpose, a new mission. So we're preventing veteran suicide in that regard because we're giving them a new mission and giving them hope. And then we're using them as humanitarian special operators to go around the world and help people that are in their. In their darkest moments.

[Sean Ryan]

What are you guys expecting in this next hurricane? Oh, yeah, the one that's coming to Florida. What's the name of it?

[Jonathan Howard]

Milton? I mean, we're literally leaving from this show to get in the plane and go right back down there and link up with the, with the team to push out tomorrow morning for it. But I think it's gonna be a bad one just cause they're still cleaning up. There's a lot of debris and those are gonna be flying missiles. I know they're trying to get it all. They're doing a good job of getting it all. But I mean that, I mean that hurricane just hit a week ago, so there's still a lot of damage. But that storm surge into the Tampa area, Tampa floods really bad. So people just need to get out. They just gotta, they gotta push inland, get safe. And then. You know, the good thing with Florida though, we're very good at handling emergencies. We have good leadership. We have a strong C2 command and control. So Florida will be established very quickly. But there's just be that downtime of, you know, let's get the roads back up, the power lines getting the water systems up. So it's, it's going to be a bad one, but Florida's definitely prepared for it.

[Sean Ryan]

And what are the. What are the links? What are the. So do you. When you guys. Is this. How do I say this? Is this compartmentalized for fundraising for each disaster like it is.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

It is. So we have the fundraiser four, Hurricane Helene, the fundraiser four, Hurricane Milton. And those are posted on our Instagram aerial recovery group.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

In the bio section you can find those.

[Sean Ryan]

What can. So I know you guys are asking for heavy equipment. You had brought up volunteers. What can the everyday person do who can't travel across the country to go work in a kitchen. They don't have the means to send an excavator or a steamroller out there. What can they do?

[Charlie Kebaugh]

They can donate or they can do their own supply drive. We had several folks set them up putting together packages of care items and then having them flown into the area. You talked about FEMA earlier. That airplane almost got shut off flying into Asheville airport. We had to go back to our buddy Devin at Hickory and get him to allow that aircraft to land and offload all those supplies yesterday.

[Jonathan Howard]

Another big thing is spreading awareness. I know everyone's hearing all this misinformation. I get accused by people like, you're a liar, you're spreading false information, you're looking for your 15 minutes of fame, all this nonsense stuff. But like, like I actually have the real videos showing this stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

And these other people online are just lying. They're reading articles. They're like, well, I read there's 6,000 military people there. And I'm like, where are they at? I'm here. I don't see them. So there's a lot of misinformation, but keep spreading it. I mean, like, my own video got fact checked by a third party.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, it really did. My own video got fact checked and it was like, this is false information. I'm just like, that's my own video. So there's a lot of. They're really trying to suppress the story of what's really happening there. Actually, Jeremy, the founder of Aerial Recovery, he was meeting with the mayor and they had CNN there at late lore. And he was escorting cnn, the biggest fake news network there is. And they wouldn't even let CNN videotape the disaster areas. They would only let him film areas that weren't that bad.

[Sean Ryan]

Are you serious?

[Jonathan Howard]

That's how bad it is when they don't even allow CNN to actually film the real story. And speaking of late lore, we should probably talk about that. That was our very first day of arriving. So when we arrived into Rutherford Airport, as we were making connections with helicopter pilots on my pilot app, there was a TFR temporary flight restriction, specifically over Late Lure and Chimney Rock, so no aircraft could fly in and out of it. So we were trying to figure out why that was because we want to take my plane and kind of go up and just re recon and see what was going on. So we called the guy that put it up. He was in charge of Frankie. Frankie Guy. Let's name. Drop him. Frankie Guy. Frankie at emergency management Services. I don't know. His last name was like, oh, yeah. We put it up to basically stop because the guy that flew his helicopter in there to drop off supplies, they were mad about it. So he's kind of going viral right now in the news. Literally, this guy flew his civilian helicopter in and bring like, water and food. And they reported him to the faa. So they were like, you can't fly in there. I'm like, well, look, I'm here, State guard. I'm also here Aerial Recovery. Like, I need to get in there because we're pushing in. Plus we already had an aerial recovery ground team there on the ground who was actually meeting with the mayor of late Lure. So Charlie asked him, he goes, well, what altitude can we fly at? He goes, I don't know. And we're like, what do you mean you put the TFR up? Like, what can we fly over it? Like, what can we do? He's just like, I don't know. And then he really started pushing them hard. And he was like, okay, you guys can fly in there. I'll give you like a squat code that'll allow you, but you can't land in there. And I'm like, well, yeah, I know I'm in a fixed wing airplane. I can't land. It's not a rotor. And he's just like, okay, just like, don't land there. But you could just tell he didn't know what was going on. So we didn't do the helicopter ride that day. But right after that, we drove in. As we were driving into Late Lure, there was a sheriff, deputy, one deputy sitting there, like a checkpoint blocking the road. And he sees us, he goes, oh, you guys stop. I already heard about you. You can't come in here. And we were like, what do you mean you heard about us? Like, we just got here. He's like, yeah, Aerial Recovery, you're not allowed to come in here. They're talking about you all over the radio right now. So he's calling his team, who's in Late lord with the mayor, and they're like, we don't know what's going on. So we tell this deputy, we're like, hey, man, we know you're just a messenger. Like, get me some authority up here. So a police captain comes up to us. Nice guy. He goes, yeah, I can't let you in, guys. He goes, they're blocking Aerial Recovery from coming in. And that's why I'm like, hey, I'm with the State Guard. I want to go in there. And he's like, I can't do it. He's like, something about the speaker of the House of North Carolina is blocking you guys from coming in. And we were just like, this is not making any sense at all. So he gets on the phone again. And really what it came down to was some people didn't like the temperament of us. I'll get to that a little bit more. And then they were telling officials to completely kick us out from going in. So this police captain was like, I will escort y'all into the next checkpoint, get you through to your team. He goes, I can probably get a lot of trouble for this. But he was like, I want everyone here to help. And he's like, these people need it bad. So good on that police captain.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Well, that was after we threatened him.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah, we kind of threatened him a little bit. So we. So we leave. This is kind of important. We leave that checkpoint into Late Lord. There's only one road, right? We leave that Checkpoint. We drive through the second checkpoint. He's like, all right, you guys are good to go by yourselves. So we drive in. There's a third checkpoint now. And that. Actually, I should say that second checkpoint probably had four deputies. We go to the third checkpoint. There's eight deputy sheriffs. They're just standing there, not doing nothing. And they're like, nope, guys, can't go any further. They just called out on the radio. We're like, no, we just got eight.

[Sean Ryan]

Fucking deputies sitting there doing nothing interactions with 50 people. You got thousands and thousands of people starving to death, dying of fucking not having medicine babies, no water. And you got eight fucking deputies, 15 on their ass.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

15.

[Sean Ryan]

15 deputies sitting on their ass at.

[Jonathan Howard]

A checkpoint at a single lane road. Single lane. They even had a SWAT vehicle. They had a swat, like, up armored, like. Like MRAP that was there. So we gets a little heated. But I started talking to him, and I'm like, hey, like, what do they have you guys doing? He's like. He's like, I'm like, are you guys doing search and recovery? Doing welfare checks? He was like, we want to. All we can do is stand right here at this checkpoint. I was like that. These guys are, like, in their 20s and 30s. He's like, literally, our only orders. We can't do anything but stand right here. And I'm just like, what a waste of manpower.

[Sean Ryan]

So what department is this?

[Jonathan Howard]

It was whatever county Late Lore is in. This is the sheriff's department of that county. So they would not let us go through. They're like, hey, I'm just the messenger. Like, I'm gonna get in trouble by the sheriff. And we're like, okay. So the sheriff is denying us. And he's like, yes, the sheriff is denying you, per the speaker of the House of North Carolina. And we're like, this is just dumb. And then we started. That's when Charlie was like, you guys about to go viral on the Internet. I'm gonna record you denying us to come in. And they were just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, you know what? We'll let you go up to the fire chief because he's actually in control of this area. So we roll up to. It's like, kind of between Chimney Rock and Lake Lore. And there's this Michigan task force. We're gonna get to these guys. This Michigan task force who is there for profit, we find out later on. And they're there with the fire chief, and they're just their leader. I don't want to put it on the Whole team there. But their leader was just very condescending. Just had this punch me face. And he just kept looking at us with, like, disgust. He'd just kind of sit there with his hands on his hips, and he'd just kind of like, look at us and just kind of like. And then one of our guys who was there on the ground already, he comes up to me and Charlie and he's like, hey, these guys, they're the problem. They're the ones reporting us to get us kicked out because they don't like us. And we're like, what do you mean? And he goes, well, I overheard a couple of them saying. He goes, look at these guys. They think they're a bunch of badasses. And he actually told me, he goes, I can hear what you're saying. And the guy was just kind of like, oh, but you look at these guys. They were a search and recovery team who had no physical capability to do this job at all. They were all very out of shape, much older. They probably could barely go up 200 yards up the side of a mountain. So it kind of became this, like, dick measuring contest. They're looking at us. We're all former soft guys. Even the leader of their group actually looks over at us. He goes, look like a bunch of Navy seals. I probably wouldn't wrestle. Y'all just like. And we're like, hey, man, cut all that out. We're here to rescue people. We're here to put in work. Like, we literally just got here and you're over here worrying about wrestling matches and who's who. Like, just tell us where we can go push in and get work done. So after we get this little confrontation done, we shake hands. Seems like everything's cool. They're like, okay, you guys can come back here and work. And we're like, great, it's done. Like, we can finally get to work. But it was already at the evening time. So the Michigan guy in charge of this task force calls for a 7am meeting the next day. Like, we be there at 7am we'll get our products and we'll push out and do work.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

And we stay two hours away.

[Jonathan Howard]

Right.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We're not going to stay in Lake Lure and take up resources from the people who need everything.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So we stay two hours away. So we're, you know, we're on the road at 5 o'clock the next morning.

[Jonathan Howard]

5Am we roll 5am like, wake up time, 4:30. We're rolling 5am we're there like 15 minutes prior no one's there. 7am Comes up, fire chief rolls up, nobody else. Sheriff deputies roll up, and we're like, where are these guys? Seven forty, they roll up. Seven forty, they roll up. Daylight's already burning, and they roll up, just like grinning at us. Just like, you know, just. They have this little smuck looks on their face. They get out and their leader of this group grabs the fire chief. And the one of the sheriff people pulls him away from us and has a little pow wow for about five minutes. Comes back around by himself. This guy from Michigan, same thing, Hands on his hips. He goes, where's your authorization papers? And we're like, what? And he's like, where's your orders to be here? Who authorized you to be here? And I was just like, I cannot believe this is happening right now. And Charlie is like, we're a nonprofit. We don't need authorization. Like, we're here to, like, rescue people. So I actually have authorization orders. And I'm like, well, here's my authorization. Like, I'm from the state Guard. And I hand him my phone, and he looks at it. He goes, this is useless. Literally didn't even look at it. I was like, no, those are my orders. I'm like, I'm here on behalf of my governor to be here. He was like, I don't even know your capabilities. And I'm just like, are you kidding me right now?

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

So he gets in this whole like, I can't work with you. And then Charlie's like, oh, why don't you just tell us where you're gonna be so we don't cross paths. We'll work over here. You guys work here. Let's just kind of like, set out our grids. Nope. I came and discussed nothing with you. And I'm just like, who is this guy? You know, like, the fire chief's not even talking to us. So we start questioning him, like, who's your authority? Who has given you your authority to be in control of this area right now? He goes, my authority comes from Michigan State, which comes from North Carolina. I'm like, okay, well, who? He's like, well, it comes from Michigan on behalf of North Carolina, because they request for us to be here, and I'm in control here. So he's like, literally saying, like. I'm like, this is my place.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jonathan Howard]

So as he pulls off, he goes and talks to the fire chief a little bit more. I overhear him saying he needs a helicopter. He's like, I need a helicopter to the fire chief. And he's like. He's literally, like, pointless feeling like, I need this helicopter. So I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna be cool. Like, you know, I'm doing the. I'm doing what's good for the people in North Carolina. I'm not. I don't care about who's in charge. So I go up to him, I'm like, hey, I got a helicopter. Like, where do you need to go? What do you need to do? He's like, I can't work with you. I already told you this. Like, I don't. I don't know your capabilities or authorizations. So I start trying to explain to him, like, hey, I'm a combat controller. Like, I'm also an FAA air traffic controller. I can. This is like, what I do is literally set up auster airfields and HLZs. Like, I can land these helicopters out here for you, put your guys in it and go do the work you need to do. He's like, no, you can't do that. Like, I was like, well, I'm bringing in. At that time, my State Guard unit was driving up and they had helicopters. I was like, I'm bringing in helicopters in here. He's like, no, you're not. And I was like, well, you're not going to stop me. He's like, why put up a tfr? And that's when I found out he was the one that told the Frankie at EMS to put up a tfr. Because he started telling me that he was so proud of himself about the guy that flew in supplies, and he was so mad about it. He's like, this guy flew in with supplies without my authorization and just landed in a field. I can't be having people out here landing helicopters, bringing supplies without talking to me first. So he's like, yeah, I report him to the faa. And he was just, like, so proud of himself for that.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

So they were gone the next day, by the way.

[Sean Ryan]

They were.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

They were there for two days and they were gone. I got that from the fire chief.

[Jonathan Howard]

So as we started talking to their crew, that's when we found out they were there for profit. And we're like, how'd you guys get here? And he's like, oh, we bid on the job. And we're like, you bid on the job? He's like, yeah, they North Carolina put out, like, requests for, like, crews to show up and you get paid. I was just like, that's when I started. It started making sense. He didn't want a State Guard Unit and a nonprofit there that would outshine him and his crew while they're there for profit now. I think that's really what it was.

[Sean Ryan]

That's sad, man.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. Meanwhile, these people are literally trapped. They're dying up there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

And they're not getting the help because everybody wants to. You know, they want their little fame and want to be in charge of everything.

[Sean Ryan]

So that wasn't so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that wasn't the government. That was just a.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

That was just on the ground.

[Jonathan Howard]

It was on the politics, trying to.

[Sean Ryan]

Trying to make money off of as.

[Jonathan Howard]

Nice as the fire chief was. Being nice is getting people killed.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

And I should say he was already retired. He retired in January. In January. And he even told us they called him back on Sunday. They're like, hey, will you come back? So he literally volunteered to go back. And he was, like, making a little. I mean, he's a nice guy, but he's like, well, they can't fire me. I already retired. You know, and he was just getting walked like a dog by this guy from Michigan and just controlling the whole situation. And then apparently, actually, the sheriff. I do want to clarify this. Speaker of the House did not deny us. He personally reached out to us at 12:30 at night after my video, he actually text a guy on our team my Instagram video. He's like, this was not me and was apologizing. You have, like, full help. And even his. I think it was his chief of staff, or right hand, whatever it was a guy named Phil. He called me. He was like, we did not do that. He was like, who was telling you that? So we kind of gave him the specifics. And then even the sheriff reached out and was like, I did not do that. And we're like, hey, well, need to talk to your deputies, because your deputies are the ones telling us that. So you need to. You need. You need to clean your own house up on what's going on.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Jonathan Howard]

But so I should say this. It was such nonsense. My commander and Aerial recovery were like, you know, we're just done with it. So we actually left Late Lore in Chimney Rock. We just abandoned it and went and found other places to go work because we couldn't get any work done on the ground.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

We did several. Several missions in Lake Lore and Chimney Rock via air.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah. But we had to pull the ground crews out because it was just.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Just too much drama.

[Jonathan Howard]

We couldn't get no work done.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Howard]

Like, nothing, man.

[Sean Ryan]

That's sad for those people.

[Jonathan Howard]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

That Is really sad for those people. Well, I want to wrap this up. I just wanted to get, you know, I wanted to get you guys in here, get what you're doing, how we can help these people, what's actually going on on the ground. I really appreciate you guys coming in here to get the word out, and I know time is of the essence and you gotta get back down to Florida, but I do, you know, we here at SRS Want to make a donation, and so I'm gonna leave it up to you guys. We can donate $10,000, or we can give you $10,000 worth of supplies to go back with you.

[Jonathan Howard]

Awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

It's up to you.

[Jonathan Howard]

No, that sounds good.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Thank you so much.

[Sean Ryan]

You're welcome. You're welcome.

[Jonathan Howard]

Are we wrapping up right now?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. You got something else?

[Jonathan Howard]

I do got something else for you. Let's hear it. I know you always like to do gifts, and obviously this was not prepared at all, but my wife came up here a couple days ago, she brought a couple stuff for me before we even knew we were coming on the show. Just, like, hand out. So I actually got you a gift.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, I got you guys a gift, too.

[Jonathan Howard]

Oh.

[Sean Ryan]

Forgot to do this at the beginning.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Thank you.

[Jonathan Howard]

I've always wanted these gummy bears. Yeah, I've always wanted these. There you go. Well, I got a gift for you as well. So. I really do do burr photography, and people don't believe me just because my appearance. They're like, you don't look like a photographer. I'm like, I know, but, like, this is, like, I took this photo in Chile in May.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn, that's cool.

[Jonathan Howard]

This is, you know, the bag. And I'll hold this up. I don't know if you guys can see it, but. So photography, I really like being out in nature. Nature is like, my. My happiness and stuff like that. And I always say it's where I kind of, like, healed myself coming out of the military and just everything else, just being out in nature. So I got into photography, and I didn't want to become about money or anything like that. So any dollar the business makes, I just give to military charities and the prints. Usually when there's, like, something bad happens, I'll take a certain print and I'll sign it, and I'll auction it off and do things like that. So I. I know you're a very big Christian, and I took this photo earlier this year down in Bonita Springs at a church near my house, and I thought this would be a perfect one. I want to send You. The print obviously didn't have it because we were working in North Carolina, but I thought you would really appreciate this. It is a bald eagle landing on top of the steeple, on top of the cross, on top of the church in Bonita Springs, Florida.

[Sean Ryan]

That's awesome, man. Thank you.

[Jonathan Howard]

It just worked out that my wife literally randomly grabbed this shirt out of my. Out of my office. And then I won't go through them all, but we had a bunch of like, kids shirts because that's what my wife brought a lot of these just to hand out to kids. So they had like T shirts and birds and stuff like that. But I figured your little kiddos or someone, you know, could use it and a little bird bag. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you, man.

[Jonathan Howard]

That's my. That's my gift to you, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. That's awesome. And if that print shows up.

[Jonathan Howard]

It will show up.

[Sean Ryan]

Can you sign it?

[Jonathan Howard]

I will sign it and I'll send it to you.

[Sean Ryan]

It'll be hanging in the studio, man. Thank you.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

What I've got for you, Sean, here is a bracelet that we give our heroes. We have a Heal the Heroes program. It's a 12 month program I was telling you about. And it says Force for Good. So what it is, is it's a reminder that all your experiences, all your military time, all the things that you've done and seen in your life can be used as a force for good, you know, and our program takes people out of alcohol addiction, out of drug addiction, out of depression. But this is the reminder that we give those guys to look at every day.

[Jonathan Howard]

And that's for you to either keep.

[Charlie Kebaugh]

Or to give to someone that, you know that might need it.

[Sean Ryan]

Force for good. Thank you, gentlemen. Well, I just want to say, you know, it's an honor to be interviewing you guys, and it's amazing what you guys are doing, and especially, you know, with the fact that we do have a failing government right now. And I'm just really thankful for you and I know everybody else is too. So God bless you and Godspeed and the next disaster.

[Jonathan Howard]

So thank you.