The video captures a series of on‑camera testimonies from residents, first responders, volunteer pilots, and Rotary/Operation Helo volunteers describing the catastrophic North Toe River flood in western North Carolina. Residents recount waking to rising waters, losing homes and vehicles, and seeking shelter at a fire station. First‑responders describe chaotic early rescue attempts hampered by destroyed bridges and inaccessible terrain. Volunteer pilots formed Operation Helo, initially providing helicopter evacuations, then delivering RVs, campers, and building materials (sheetrock, plywood) to displaced families. Rotary District 7680 supplied logistical, financial, and advocacy support, including legal assistance and grant coordination. The speakers highlight ongoing challenges: denied FEMA/SBA aid, lack of funding for private road repairs, and many families still living in tents without running water. The narrative emphasizes community resilience, the importance of keeping promises, and the long‑term rebuilding effort that remains unfinished.
Chapters
The night that it happened, I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning. At the time, I didn't know what was happening. I immediately headed out to my house on the river, and that's what led me to be there at 7 in the morning. Yeah, this is getting nasty.
Holy shit. Well, the bridge is still there.
I left my Tundra on the side of the street as high up as I could leave it, and the water was now over my bridge. Everything was gone. The house, my truck we found flipped over on the side of the highway. So I'm safe and I'm at the fire station. We're going to wait it out here. We are punching our way out of the roof at this point in case the flood continues.
Hate doing it, but as you can see, everything in here is floating away.
It's been amazingly painful. And, you know, what all of us want here, what I'd like is this to just come to conclusion. And we're nowhere close. And the rest of the country has no idea how bad it is here even now.
It was chaos. So we got our instructions to go out and we started doing search and rescue immediately. The first 2 weeks was very scary because you went to places that you found a person, but there was no house, there was no bridge, there was no way to get them out or rescue vehicle that could get there.
That is the water line from the flood of the North Toe River. It's 5.5 feet. I was here by myself. To watch the river overtake the buildings was very scary, you know, just to think that— you never think something like that's going to happen to you, and especially in the mountains. It changed a lot of lives.
So Operation Helo was a bunch of us. We got together and we saw that there was a need nobody was filling. So all of us are pilots.
We called our friends, we got together, We learned quickly that in times like this, the aviation community especially, they want to help, and the community, it rallied. I mean, we had, we had helicopters all the way from Wyoming.
The immediate need was saving people and getting people out of the area because nobody else was doing it. Since then, we've focused more on getting people into We've all delivered RVs and campers up to people here. Now the third step is we're helping the community rebuild and just general help, helping with grants.
It's been a fight with FEMA and SBA, not an assistance. Operation Hilo came along. They had set up an attorney and somebody from the government that was representing the senator, and they had engineers, and they had all these groups of people. And they were legit.
Operation Hilo has supplied the sheetrock and a lot of the other supplies, plywood. They've just been really great.
There's still people without running water. There's still people that their, their private bridge or private driveway access is gone. The state's not going to fund it because it's not a state road. It's a private road.
What's happening in western North Carolina People are still living in tents and in other, other kinds of dwellings that are not their homes. And we have to make sure that we get those people back on their feet again.
Rotary's been fantastic. They've been very supportive. Just the community that we have and just the selflessness of all the Rotarians worldwide.
They're trying to rebuild everything. I know it's not over yet. I mean, it's not over yet till we can get back onto our property.
Recently, we are standing on the front porch of the Tricas' house. They have applied for and been denied for FEMA, and obviously it being flood damage, insurance doesn't cover it. We, as Operation Helo, said we are going to take care of everything that you need to get you back into your house, and he looked us And so to me, that gets me emotional right now simply because a lot of these people have been told something that hasn't taken place. And that's why for us it is so important for us to keep our promises. And we said that we were going to be here and we are going to be here until we can't fund it anymore. And that's what we're going to do.
