Former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle has made several helicopter supply drops in remote areas of Hurricane Helene’s destructive path, even getting much-needed medication to someone stranded in the North Carolina mountains after they signaled with a mirror.
Biffle, a Washington native now based in the Charlotte area, has been volunteering with his own helicopter with Operation Airdrop to help out victims of the flash floods that destroyed portions of the western region of the state.
In one video posted to social media on Thursday, the former NASCAR Busch series champion showed how he was able to help someone after seeing them flash a mirror from “well over a mile away”:
It was the “only way we were able to find someone stranded in the mountains at bottom of steep canyon,” Biffle said. After six landing attempts, he said he was able to drop off “a chainsaw, EpiPens, insulin, chicken food, formula, gas, 2 stroke oil, and sandwiches premade from Harris Teeter before we left.”
In an announcement with the person’s location on X, Biffle said, “If your family is near this pin, they got my attention with a mirror flashing against the sun they are okay and we’ve dropped off supplies”:
The helicopter pilot is one of “dozens” of private individuals volunteering their own time and fuel to get into “hard-to-land areas” for supply drops, WRAL reported.
“I saw a guy, I caught him out of the corner of my eye and I was several miles away,” he told the outlet. “I was saying to my partner, there’s no way we’re gonna find someone up here or a place to land. I saw him flashing a mirror. A mirror is a great signaling device.”
Biffle added that he is going to “keep going until we feel like everybody’s got what they need.”
While private helicopter pilots have been delivering aid to Appalachian communities impacted by Helene, the Biden-Harris administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been catching flack for its lack of adequate response.
Just days after the federal government announced another $8 billion in aid to Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris announced $750 for Hurricane Helene victims from FEMA, Breitbart News reported.
Harris visited Georgia on Wednesday — two days after former President Donald Trump — to make the controversial announcement:
“There’s people that have lost everything… I’m not expecting [them] to give us thousands of dollars, but they can do more than that,” a disgruntled Asheville, North Carolina resident said of the measly emergency funds in a Fox News interview:
Since the $750 in FEMA aid — just $50 more than what the victims of the 2023 Maui fires received — has garnered negative attention, the agency put out a “fact-check” saying that victims may get “other forms of assistance” if they “qualify.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has claimed that FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the remainder of hurricane season, despite $640 million being allotted to his department for issues related to illegal immigrants.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds — FEMA does not have the funds — to make it through the season,” Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday.
In a Friday letter to Mayorkas, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said that whistleblowers have told his office that federal, state, and local emergency responders have sat idle in North Carolina while waiting on orders from FEMA.
“As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have sat idle, waiting for FEMA,” the Florida congressman wrote:
“We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency,” he added.