Private Citizens First To Respond To This Tragedy In North Carolina
Griff Jenkins joins me right now from Fox News. You catch him every weekend. There on Fox, of course… You’re still in western North Carolina. You’ve been surveying the damage reporting back on this before we get into the political of it talk to me about what it is that you’re seeing and what officials are saying about what they might still find.
Griff Jenkins FULL report from North Carolina here:
Well, let me just start with this, Tony. And that is one thing is clear. This is going to be the magnitude of the destruction that I’m standing looking at in Swannanoa, NC, and you may have just heard. Overhead, a helicopter. That helicopter, by the way, is a private citizen helicopter. Private groups that were the first to respond to this tragedy here in Swannanoa. I’m sitting outside a tire store that has been completely wiped off, removed from its foundation, dragged in shambles over. The riverbank, this Swannanoa River, it crested into more than 25 feet, a van upside down, a car upside down into that Creek. And for as far as the eye can see, businesses and homes are destroyed with debris and mud and everything littered everywhere. And this is just one of the western North Carolina communities along with Chimney Rock and Marion and other areas where literally the towns were wiped out.
But what I was doing today on the channel was I have exclusive ride along in a Blackhawk helicopter operated by Samaritan’s Purse that was taking SpaceX‘s chief electrical engineer with dozens of Starlinks into communities that have been entirely cut off, you think Tony about hurricanes, you don’t think about him hitting the mountains. But that’s exactly what happened here. Along with the rising flooding rivers, even high in the mountains of North Carolina, the wind caused massive damage and cut off communities. In these, the helicopter I was with shared his first view into these communities only reachable by helicopter, and these people have been trapped. Yesterday I was doing it. That was day 9. Today’s day 10 people are still cut off, no power, no water, and Starlink lets them get back on and communication to talk to people and get the help they need. Now there’s quite remarkable.
Yesterday we went into a tiny little cutoff community called the Burnsville and it’s in the mountains and an 83-year-old woman was sitting on her porch waving. I was with Edward Graham, son of Reverend Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse and Mike Coryell of Starlink…
They said we needed to stop. This woman 83-year-old Sue had been there by herself, trapped in her home, no power, no water, in tears. She had recent heart surgery. About 3 or 4 weeks ago. She said her husband died… SpaceX gave her a generator, set it up, connected it to her house so she has power and gave her a Starlink so she could begin reaching out to her family, her granddaughter, to let her know that she’s fine and alive and also to get online to connect and make phone calls for medicines that she needs. She said she hasn’t seen anybody up there from the government or otherwise. And you know, the sad part of it is it’s pretty clear from, you know, the reporting from many reporters that she’s not an isolated case by any stretch.
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