Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
All right, here we
are again, not the press, and we
have a?
Uh ridiculous character with us.
His name is Adam Smith.
I'm just joking, no, um, adam,welcome to not the press.
Thanks for coming on.
Um, your story is bad-ass withstuff that's happened in North
Carolina, uh, with hurricaneHelene.
I have lots of questions, Um,but I'm, I'm, we're all honored
(00:35):
that you're here.
Uh, you guys made the trip uphere.
We know you're even busy, um,but thanks for being here, man,
and I know Josh has a lot ofquestions for you too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, most definitely
Welcome.
Happy to have you.
I'm the co-host on here.
We're extremely excited andhonored to have you.
We think what you're doing isamazing and it's real admirable,
honorable and just loyalty tonot only your land but the
people you love.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I appreciate that.
Yeah, thanks for having me,yeah man.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah man, yeah.
So how was the trip coming uphere?
Long it wasn't so bad though.
The closer you get to DC, theworse the drivers get.
You know like you definitivelyknow how close you are getting
to the DC metro area, becausethe closer you get, the worse
the drivers are.
People just start cutting youoff.
(01:29):
They don't really care.
There's literally zero fucksgiven by.
What's the time.
What the fuck is that?
Have you ever?
Have you ever driven throughannandale?
Uh, no, I haven't.
Oh, man, I might have, I don'tknow.
It's all little korean ladies,old korean ladies, driving
around and it's like they're alldoing 10 miles under the speed
limit.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, All right.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So, hey, man, I want
to kick this off, cause we do
have an event tonight that, uh,is for you and your um, the
funds you you're raising, allthe great work you're doing down
in North Carolina.
So let's start this questionoff first.
Um, first of all, tell us yourstory of what happened when that
hurricane happened, the reasonwhy you went to North Carolina
(02:07):
and what, what was going on withthat whole thing.
Well, let me start off bysaying, excuse me, let me start
by saying thank you, like toboth of you guys, thanks for
having us here, Thanks forbringing us up, thanks for
hosting the fundraiser, thanksfor putting it together.
You know, the fact that we'reeven having this conversation
now means, I think, more than itcould have meant eight weeks
(02:28):
ago or nine weeks ago.
Eight or nine weeks ago it wasthe talk of the town, right,
national media, press coverageeverywhere, live interviews on
Fox News, the whole nine yards.
The country knew what was goingon in Western North Carolina
and over the last I mean, inreality, probably at the end of
the first week, moving into thesecond week national media
(02:53):
coverage dwindled significantlybecause it was a black eye on
the current administration,especially on Vice President
Harris's current campaign.
It was a true and legitimateblack eye.
And the first media coverageand the question that was asked
to me in the very beginning wasyou know what's your opinion on
FEMA's response?
And my, the very first word outof my mouth was incompetent.
And that was the first.
That was the first national,nationally aired news interview.
(03:15):
I mean, what was your, what'syour reasoning for?
I mean cause.
Here's the deal, adam.
I know that people aresuffering, they have been
suffering and the whole thingwas a disaster down there.
But when you see social media,you see all kinds of stuff
coming out.
And then you, you hear allthese assholes, conspiracy
theory, this conspiracy theory,that what is the truth?
(03:36):
What did FEMA do?
Or what did they not do?
I mean what?
What did FEMA do?
Fema performed exactly as FEMAalways performs.
They show up late to the game,they get in the way, they say
that you're not qualified orcertified to do X, y or Z.
Fema in general has kind ofpositioned itself or not
positioned itself.
It's been structured to be thehead of the NIMS system, so the
(03:57):
National Emergency ManagementSystem, as well as ICS, which is
the Incident Command System.
The ICS process of command is,when a national disaster happens
or a major disaster happens,there's a command structure that
immediately takes place fromthe state level down to the
county level.
That helps to direct effort andFEMA's kind of positioned
itself as the head of NIMS inthe region.
(04:18):
So each region is, the countryis broken down into regions,
each region has a special team,a FEMA special team that
operates inside that region andthen the senior leadership of
the FEMA special team are kindof the head of the NIMS for that
region.
On a natural disaster They'vealways been the ones that have
come in and taken over.
Right, well, we're in charge.
(04:39):
Now we're going to directeffort and action.
What they found in this instancewas that we had already
invented a wheel and the wheeldidn't have to be reinvented.
And if FEMA wanted to come inand take over the operation or
the National Guard wanted tocome in and take over the
operation, they would have notonly reinvented the wheel, they
would have put us back two,three weeks easy and setting
(05:00):
back the operation regionally ina significant manner.
And that was one of the biggestpushbacks that we had in the
whole process, the conversationthat I had with senior county
officials, with senior personnel, with emergency management.
So the directors of emergencymanagement in the counties that
were around the region,including senior leadership at
FEMA, was don't come in andattempt to take over.
(05:24):
As soon as you do that, it willdisrupt the effort on the
ground and what has been createdwill fall apart because you'll
want to reinvent the wheel.
Don't reinvent the wheel.
We've already got it invented.
We already have hundreds ofspecial operators in the region
right now that own this land.
They own it.
They claim this land as theirown because it's connected to
them.
It's connected to their homes.
This is where their familylives.
(05:45):
We already have it in place.
It's already there.
We're already doing it.
We've already taken the samemodel that we use in the United
States Army Special Forces andwe've applied it real time on
the ground for life-savingefforts rather than life-taking
efforts.
And we did it, which iscentralized command,
decentralized control, ratherthan trying to have this one to
five command echelon or commandstructure that ICS or NIMS uses.
(06:06):
We have the ability to go.
What's your skill set?
What gap can you?
What value do you provide?
What gap can you fill?
Cool, this is what the intentis.
Here's our big picture.
This is what we're working atachieving.
How do you fit into thatpicture?
And then that individual, who'salready a professional, doesn't
have to receive micromanagement.
They know exactly what theyhave to do in order to fill the
(06:27):
gap and in order to take theirskill sets and apply it real
time.
And that's what we did on theground.
Yeah, and you were sayingreinvent the wheel.
But how long was that wheelbuilt for before FEMA even got
there?
Oh, look man.
Well, that's to answer yourfirst question.
Taylor and I she's my fiance wewere down in Texas, in Austin,
(06:51):
for a for-profit businessconference for her company.
And Thursday night what day wasthat?
Was that the 26th?
I'll have to go back and lookat the dates.
So Thursday night this is justbefore the storm hits or the
storm's pushing in that Thursdaynight.
So this would have beenSeptember, I think 26th.
Right, we lose contact with mydaughter and her mom, and my
(07:15):
daughter and her mom live rightnext door to Taylor and I on
highway nine, on the Southportion of black mountain, right
in the middle of the mountains,right along the broad river.
Her house is about 30 or 40yards off the Broad River.
Our house is about 80 yards offthe Broad River or so, and the
Broad River is the river thatwashed out Bat Cave and Chimney
Rock like washed them off theface of the earth, wow.
(07:36):
And so we lost contact.
We had no tech service, wecouldn't make any phone calls.
Thursday night, friday morning,we woke up, and we woke up
early because we had to get fromAustin to Dallas to go speak at
a nonprofit called the TexasValor Project.
Now the Texas Valor Project andCoast to Coast and Defenders of
Freedom are on nonprofits thatwork together to send veterans
to traumatic brain injurytreatment, and so December of
(07:57):
last year they sent me and Ilove those guys.
They're all amazing, they'rejust spectacular human beings
and they're doing such greatwork for veterans all over the
country and we want to supportthem.
So this would have been thethird year that I got to speak
at the Texas Valor Project andit was going to be an awesome
chance to see these guys andhave the attendees go through
the journey Right.
(08:19):
So Friday morning which I thinkwould have been the 27th we had
no comms and we couldn't makeany communications and we
couldn't get in touch with anyof the family members, and so we
were driving from Austin toDallas and it got to be about,
you know, 8.30, 9 o'clockcentral time, and we still had
no communication.
And I finally got a text fromMegan's brother-in-law my former
(08:43):
brother-in-law and he sent me atext and it came through as a
text, not an iMessage, whichmeans there's no internet
connectivity, and he said theroads are still flooded.
I don't think we're going to beable to get back there, but we
haven't heard from Megan andToby.
Wow.
And so we got to Dallas.
We stopped at a nonprofit.
We told them we're not them, wecan't stay, we got to go.
(09:04):
Yeah, that's right.
And so we turned and burned andwe broke every law.
From Dallas, texas, to Asheville, north Carolina, over the next
18-hour period, we passed onshoulders, I kept it floored, we
stayed at 96 miles an hourunless the traffic got in the
way and we had to slow down.
We stopped for gas, we stoppedfor a chainsaw, we stopped for
(09:27):
chainsaw fuel and we finally gotinto the area at about three
o'clock in the morning, saturdaymorning, which I think would
have been the 28th, and we triedto cut our way in and every
road that we went into it wasblocked, trees were down, roads
were completely washed out,freaking mudslides everywhere.
And before we got there therelike 1 am I looked at taylor and
I said you know, I thinkthey're probably dead, like
(09:50):
nobody can get in 5, 30 or so.
That night prior I got a phonecall from a good friend of mine,
jamie white.
Jamie's a phenomenal human being, jamie um, his family was in
danger and after the stormsubdued settled, he couldn't get
his family out of the mountains, but they were okay in the
house that they were in at thetime.
So he's a firefighter.
He packed up and he just tookoff and he went to start helping
(10:12):
and he climbed to the top of amountain and he got a bunch of
text messages from me hey, what,what's house?
Broad river area, this is whereToby and Megan live, what's the
word?
And he called me and he saidit's really bad, everyone's cut
off, the mountains are cut off.
I can't get to them.
It's really bad, you have toget here.
And uh, we tried to get in,couldn't get in.
(10:40):
That all day Friday we sent outtext messages, facebook messages
, text messages.
We're going to need help.
We can't get in.
The only way we're going to beable to get to my family is if
we have a helicopter.
So do I know somebody who knowssomebody, who knows somebody
that'd be willing to fly me andI can get my daughter and her
mom out from the mountains ifit's possible?
And at this point you didn'teven know if they were alive.
(11:09):
At this point we didn't't know,we had no comms with them.
You know we were sitting allday friday by.
You know, by friday at 10 pm ithad been 24 hours of no comms
and by the time we got there itwas really close to to being
right at 36 hours.
When we landed on the ground,it was really close to 36 hours
of no communications.
Um, and by the grace of godprovidential is the only way I
can say it Everything that hashappened from the moment we left
Texas to right now being herewith you has been providential.
(11:29):
Somebody reached out, a friendof a friend.
He had a helicopter.
He met us at the HarleyDavidson dealership Saturday
morning at like 9, 915.
He landed, we loaded up, he andI flew out, we landed and they
were perfect.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
That's a blessing,
though it's a blessing, and that
that's gotta be fuckingstressful as shit, as you know.
You gotta keep going becauseyou gotta make it to where it's
your baby, the the.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
It stopped being
about rescuing them and it just
started being about, you know, I.
I have to make certain that Ican recover them, like I, I just
assumed that they were dead.
Like we, we got to make surethat we can recover them.
Like I can't let.
I can't, let you know, I, Igotta one, no matter what.
I gotta find my baby girl and Igotta find her mom, no matter
what, like that.
That's, that's now the mission,and they just accepted it.
(12:20):
Well, you have to function.
Yeah, so I think it was easierto not have hope that they were
alive and accept the worst casescenario.
And then, when we landed, tosee them both alive and to see
my little girl just running upyelling at me why are you flying
on an airplane, you know, likethat's the, that was the, that
(12:44):
was probably the.
That was probably the greatestpiece of all this was that, that
was the, that was, that was,that was probably miracle number
three, maybe miracle numberfour.
Yeah, man, I mean, god, I can't.
I'm just, I'm just trying toput myself in your position.
I can't even.
I don't even know.
I know that I, I would like tothink that I would be
(13:09):
unstoppable, like you to to goand get my son and carry?
I'd like to think that.
But until that situationarrives, I mean, uh, it's, it's
pretty incredible.
It's pretty incredible becauseyou know what, if, if you didn't
do that and they were there foran extra day or something, you
don't know what could happen.
You don't know, you don't know.
(13:30):
I mean, maybe they tried to getout themselves and they you
know what I mean.
Well, she even said after thefact, when, when we flew, she
was talking to Taylor and shesaid to Taylor she said, well, I
was planning on packing up andtrying to walk out.
Well, you could have tried, butit would have taken days with a
(13:52):
little kid, like with athree-year-old and a dog, and
carrying all your shit on yourback If you were taking it and
it wouldn't, it wasn't eightmiles, eight and a half miles,
but you had.
When I say roads were washed out, I mean roads were gone.
Yeah Right, they were gone.
They were no longer existent.
There was, there was mudslidesthat had slid down the mountain,
that covered up threeswitchbacks and knocked the road
(14:12):
out, and then, where it landedand stopped, it was, you know,
it was 30, 40 feet deep and 50yards wide on the road there's.
You know, on the, uh, on thephone, you were telling me, um,
how big the, the devastated areaactually was.
Oh, can you describe that alittle bit?
Yeah, this wasn't.
Uh, you know, you hear abouttowns.
(14:34):
You hear about Swannanoa, youhear about Asheville.
You hear about swannanoa, youhear about asheville.
You hear about towns, right,chimney, rock, spruce, pine, bat
cave, burnsville.
Uh, elk, um, um, what is elkcreek?
Like, you hear about thesetowns relief.
People don't realize that we'retalking about a 200 mile radius
.
Jeez, like.
It's not like localizeddestruction.
(14:54):
It's not like you drive downthe street of one town and one
town was devastated.
You're, a hundred thousandhomes were damaged or destroyed,
a hundred thousand homes, sixthousand miles of roads, 41
trillion gallons of water fellin 24 hours.
The, the reservoir went 18 feetover flood level.
(15:15):
Holy shit, that's how high isflood, flood level.
I don't even know what floodlevel is.
I just know that if you canimagine one reservoir, something
like 318,000 gallons of waterin one foot of depth, so one
foot of depth is like 318,000gallons of water, and it was at
22 feet above flood level, andthat's on one acre.
(15:38):
So one acre at one foot is 318000 gallons, and that thing is
like that.
That particular reservoir is, Idon't know, like 300 something
or 400 something.
Acres, yeah, of reservoir,millions and millions and
millions of gallons of waterflooded the lowlands.
More like they called it.
(15:59):
It's now called a geologicalevent because more, millions of
pounds of earth moved, riversredirected themselves, rivers
changed paths.
It's so hard to describe and Idon't want to be dramatic about
it because I hate all the dramaon social media where we're in
(16:20):
dire need or we're in desperateneed, or there was you know what
we were there was a desperateneed for supplies and effort and
and there was a dire need for,for help and support.
There was and there was a direneed for rescue operations 100
and FEMA fucking failed every,every path.
But I don't want to sounddramatic.
I do want to say the fact ofthe matter is is that it's
(16:40):
really hard for the human brainto fathom the extent, yeah, of
destruction, the amount of earth, the amount of water, just in
general, that happened, thatmoved, that fell in that 24-hour
period.
It's, it's you.
You can't be dramatic becauseit is in of itself Drama.
(17:01):
Yeah, you know there's a guyyou're going to meet tonight.
His name's Richard, um, hisfriend from here in Leesburg
went down there a couple ofweeks ago to to help.
He brought supplies or whatever, and he is now coming here for
supply.
Like he, he, he described thedevastation to Richard I'm
(17:22):
hearing this third hand fromRichard but that it is so
tremendous there.
No national media source evencame close to describe me what
actually happened there.
No, because the devastation isjust absolutely out of this.
It's more than a war zone.
Oh, yeah, in a shorter periodof time.
Yeah me what actually happenedthere.
No, because the devastation isjust absolutely out of this.
It's.
It's more than a war zone.
Oh, yeah, and um, in a shorterperiod of time.
(17:43):
Yeah, the.
The only thing that I couldattribute this to is if you took
a, um, if you, you seem likethe, the curved scrapers, like
an ice scraper, but it's curved,and you kind of hook it through
the bottom of a bucket orsomething and scrape out
whatever's in the bottom of thebucket, yeah, yeah, if you could
imagine doing that throughevery river valley where that
(18:07):
scraper came through and justscraped everything down the
river valley because the amountof water and the amount of force
, the amount of pressure thatcame through there.
That's, that's what it's akinto.
It's like.
It's like it's like they carpetbombed every river valley.
Well, look man, I, I can telljust by the you know you
describing this and you knowyour, your, your passion for
(18:28):
what happened.
And I mean you were, you were aspecial forces guy, you've seen
combat, you've been in war,you've been in some bad places,
um, but I guarantee you, youprobably don't have the same
passion talking about thoseplaces as what you just did.
And to me, being in the, youknow, from a kind of the same
(18:50):
circle, um, I could definitelyrecognize that that it wasn't
recognized there.
I can recognize that from, fromjust talking with you, and you
know, uh, I don't even know youthat well, I just know you're a
good dude from Brie and you know, just the last couple of times
we've talked on the phone andstuff, but, um, you know I, I
(19:13):
know you're, you're genuine, andyou know I can tell that this
is, uh, this is something.
The magnitude of this is justginormous, it is, and people
just don't really, uh, americans, uh, will always get behind
something if they know about it.
I think is that the thing is islike the media tends to make
everyone forget about you.
Um, yeah, and you'll see thattonight, like there, there are
(19:38):
people that wanted to come, oryou know, cause it's on a
Tuesday night, right, um, butthey, they have absolutely came
up and talked with Josh and Iand said, hey, you know what?
This is awesome, you guys aredoing this.
You know, they wanted to comemeet you, um, and there's going
to be people that are theretonight.
(19:58):
There's people that I haven'ttalked to for a long time, that
aren't even a part of the club,that are going to be there
tonight because they believestrongly that.
You know what we shouldn't beforgetting, like this is not the
time we cannot let the newscycle and everything else forget
about these people.
Right now is when theirstruggle is going to start.
(20:23):
You know, I mean mean rebuildingis one of the biggest things.
It's it that's where you needthe most help.
After, after recovery effort.
It's the hardest part, it isabsolutely and it's the longest
part.
Yeah, yeah, um, and I'm gladthere's people like you down
there doing it.
Man, it's, uh, it's prettybadass.
Well, I, I, I'm, I won't takeany responsibility for it, I'm
just a fellow that rolled aroundin a big old pile of shit and
it stuck to me and people justcame out of the woodworks
because they either smelled itor they wanted to roll around in
it too.
(20:45):
You ain't going to put it on me.
We've had over 26, 2700volunteers come through just our
location, just our location,like probably three and a half,
four, four and a half, 5 millionpounds of supplies that have
come through our location thatwe've received.
Dude, the things that I wasseeing on social media from like
um, like the, the socom,different chat things and
(21:07):
different groups, was amazing tome.
Yeah, just everyone just cominglike specifically within
special operations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, specificallylike everyone's, just like hey,
man, I man, I'm on my way.
Yeah, I got these skills, oh,where do I go?
Boom, boom, boom.
By Wednesday, thursday, thefirst week, we had 80, 75 to 90
(21:29):
special operators, specialoperators Right From every tier,
from every unit in the UnitedStates special operations
community, from everyintelligence agency.
Everybody took time off, theytook leave, they took vacation,
whatever they had to do.
Guys were in retirement, theycame out of retirement, I mean,
you name it.
We had guys.
We had we had dudes from tierone, elements from brag.
(21:50):
We had dudes from tier one,elements from Northern Virginia.
We had white side soft as greenberets and Navy seals.
We had Marsock.
That was on site.
We had MARSOC that was on site.
We had guys on leave from activeduty that took their own
personal leave time to come outand support and be of assistance
.
I mean, you name it, we hadthem there.
And then we had with usco-looking.
We had National Guard.
We had a National Guard liaison.
By day three, the NationalGuard liaison, he self deployed
(22:13):
from the National Guard and waslike I heard our commander said
you probably could use some help.
I came out to see if you coulduse some help.
We were like we could.
We could use your air assets.
What do you have?
And by the time we got into itby like day 10, we had a Mike
Coriel who's a chief electricalengineer for SpaceX.
He was there with us.
We had a hundred and on averageabout 115 to 125 volunteers on
(22:36):
the ground at any one time.
We had, um, the FAA wrote afreaking note on dude.
This is crazy shit.
So the FAA wrote a note ondeclaring our HLZ designated
controlled airspace.
That was ours to control Dude,that awesome dude.
Look, josh, you know I mean themagnitude.
(22:57):
Okay, let me, let me put it thisway.
Let me I'm gonna put it inperspective in a war zone, to
have any type of air right tocontrol airspace.
Yeah, in a war zone, you wouldthink I mean it is pretty easy,
but it's also pretty hard.
And same thought, right it.
It takes a lot of moving partsto make something like that
(23:19):
happen.
To have that happen here in theStates is fucking phenomenal.
Man, like someone at the FAA,had their head.
They were.
I guarantee they were probablymilitary or something.
They were.
Fucking guarantee it they were.
We talked to him on the phone.
Yeah, yeah, because there's noway that.
I mean that guy had his headscrewed on straight.
A woman had their head screwedon straight.
(23:39):
Man, it just happened.
Yeah, man, no, that is atremendous thing for that to
happen.
I mean, we had a day when wehad 102 unique airframes touched
down on our airfield.
Wow In one day that was not evenin a 24-hour period, that was
from like lights.
We had, I don't know.
Sunrise was like 8, I don'tknow 07, 07, 15.
(24:01):
And then we had, you know,clouds had cooked off at that
point by like 8, 15.
And we were running birds by 8,30.
And between the birds that wewere running on site, plus the
birds that landed on ourlocation, 102 unique airframes.
(24:24):
So did you guys have like yourown airboss, like a rotating
thing of air bosses?
Yeah, we said yeah, we had ourown air boss.
We coordinated with the countyair boss.
Um, the crazy part was, earlyon, we, we made contact with um,
the county air boss.
You talk about a really, reallyawesome, awesome human being,
phenomenal human being.
This guy is just.
I mean, he's a, he's a man ofgod, he's a family man man.
He's humble in his approach.
He recognized what assets hehad and what he didn't have.
Then he got a note from somebodyand it was Adam helicopter guy.
(24:46):
Harley Davidson, call him.
That was the note he got and hecalled me and it was a close of
business Monday night.
It says Monday night, threedays after the storm had passed
and we were shutting down theoperations for the night,
because he couldn't fly at night.
And he called me.
He said hey, dude, like myname's Christian.
(25:06):
And I was like what's up, dude,my name's Adam.
He's like, somebody gave me yournumber, I'm the air boss for
the EOC.
And I went that's awesome, man.
What can I do to be a service?
How can we help you?
And he said look, I don't havethe assets that I need to be
able to do what you guys aredoing.
If I get something on the lineand I don't think I can cover it
, can I send it to you?
(25:26):
And I was like no problem, andhe went, he went.
The first problem I have rightnow is I don't have any oxygen
tanks for my ambulances.
We've used all of them and wedon't have a place to get them
refilled because there's nopower.
No power there's.
So we're operating off ofgenerators, off of star links.
(25:46):
There's no cell communications,there's no internet except for
star links and there is no powerfrom the grid.
Everything, everything isgenerator powered.
Everything, everything internetwise or cell phones
connectivity wise, is all doneoff of starlink, everything.
And so he, he, we made thephone call.
Actually, what was even moreinteresting was that he made the
phone call and um, and then, uh, the next day he sent me a
(26:10):
radio so that we could havecomms.
By the mid of the fourth day,we were able to get a couple of
viper repeaters up and running,wow.
And so they were able to getpower to the Viper repeaters,
which is what emergencymanagement runs off of.
And um, I want to say it wasprobably day four and he sent me
a radio, so we had direct lineof communications.
And so that first night he waslike hey, I, we don't have any
O2 tanks, we don't have anyoxygen tanks.
(26:30):
And it could have been thatMonday or could have been
Tuesday, like, been a whirlwind,my dates are not going to be
100 on, yeah, and I went okay,well, let's see what we can do.
Then we put it out to the teamand the team started making
phone calls and literally within24 hours, we had 182 oxygen
tanks show up and we deployedthose oxygen tanks to the county
and we refit every one of theirambulances, we refit their
(26:52):
medical centers, we refit their,like you name it.
We had an awesome oh, and itwas.
But it was like dude, you, god,man, that is america.
Oh, you know what I'm saying?
It is god, it's god, it's, yeah, that's all that too.
It's, it's, it's all god.
And I gotta tell you the vastmajority of american people have
it in them to do stuff likethat.
They do.
Oh, 100 it is.
(27:14):
But how do you?
How do you?
The question that I have is howdo you go from a black hole of
communication and thingsmiraculously show up?
Not, I'm not a conspiracytheorist, but I can tell you
this definitively we, we had abird on the tarmac.
We had to go do um.
We had a medical emergency thatwe were given support to, and
it was a diabetic emergency andthe lady had no insulin and she
(27:34):
she was, her blood sugar wasdropping out and she had to get
evacuated off the mountain.
Well, how did we get thisinformation?
Starlinks and generators,starlinks and generators.
And so we got the information.
We're spinning a bird up and wehad run out of insulin night,
the night before.
So we didn't have any insulin,we didn't have any glucagon, we
didn't have any test strips and,as the bird is getting ready to
take off with our medic, um,who I think was a PJ, um, I'm
(27:59):
like, I'm like, dude, we reallyneed insulin.
And another guy was like wereally need insulin, somebody
else has said we really needinsulin.
And a van pulled up to thefront gate of the Harley Um and
the gate.
The access control guy was likehey man, like what can we do
for you?
And he's like how can I be ofservice?
Do you guys need anything?
He goes yeah, we need insulin.
He goes, hold on a second, hereaches behind himself in the
van and he pulls out a coolerfull of insulin on test strips.
(28:22):
Right then, right there on onthe spot, holy shit, dude.
And the access control guy getsthe cooler and runs it to the
helicopter.
Yeah, yeah, and it was like thatevery time we needed it and had
just shown up 15 minutes beforewe needed it or had shown up 15
minutes after we needed it,right then and it would show up
(28:42):
right then.
It was like a freaking timewarp on the ground.
It was, it was.
I didn't.
That's surreal, man.
I I never experienced anythinglike in my life.
Yeah, but I and so, um, we needto get to josh real quick
because, josh, I know you've gotsome good questions.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, I definitely
got a couple, two of what I
think is good questions.
Hopefully I don't fuck this up.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I ain't going to fuck
it up.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
You can't mess this
one up, dude Shit.
I mean she was just telling mehoney, get back to the fucking
mic.
No, so, being that, like youwere, you dedicated a lot of
your life to this country toprotect the country, going to
other countries to do things,and you spent all this time as a
(29:24):
Green Beret and stuff like that, right and all these things
work, and then some shit likethis happens and FEMA just kind
of fucks everybody.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Like how does that
make you look at that section of
the government?
It makes me look at thatsection of the government.
The same way I've always lookedat them Okay, worthless.
They are worthless, they areworthless.
Look man, fema.
In the first 10 days of the newfiscal year, fema came out and
did a news presser that saidwe've used 50% of our budget.
They have an $18 billion with aB billion-dollar budget per
(29:54):
annum, and at the first 10 daysof the new fiscal year, they
said they used up 50% of it Forwhat?
Well then, they said thishappens every year.
Well then, we start digginginto where they're using it for.
And they're using it to providefunding to illegal immigrants
that are illegally crossing theborders of the United.
States, not even citizens, noteven citizens, not even American
citizens.
And we know this, it'sfact-based, it's not conspiracy
(30:15):
theory, it's been proven, weknow that.
This is the fact.
They even said it.
They said it outright, outright.
So when you look at things likethat and then you hear them say
, well, we're going to have toreduce spending, and then you
look at the camps that theybuilt in order to house their
relief workers, which arepowered, they have heated
bathrooms and shower stalls andtrailers.
(30:35):
They have heated and poweredsleeping facilities.
They have a dining facilitycompletely set up like a forward
operating base that we wouldhave overseas in a combat zone,
and they're housing, rather thanhousing the 700 people or a
thousand people they could house, they have 225 people they're
housing and they're allcontracted FEMA workers on the
ground.
Not one North Caroliniancitizen, not one American
(31:00):
resident living in any one ofthose fucking trailers, because
they're all relief workers.
So what do they do?
They say here here are somehotel vouchers.
We're going to give you hotelvouchers so you can go sleep in
hotels.
We're going to give you a30-day voucher.
Most, you can go sleep inhotels.
We're going to give you a30-day voucher.
Most people begin vouchersuntil the beginning of November,
which means that their voucherswere up 30 days later, december
2nd, december 3rd, december 5thand December 6th is the window,
(31:20):
right now, when a majority ofthose vouchers are going to be
up, and that also doesn'tautomatically mean if they don't
have a home to go to, that FEMAis going to update that voucher
automatically.
They have to go through are-approval process, a
re-application process.
Fema even says the 30-dayvoucher is designed for you to
find a more permanent livingsolution.
Here's the fucking problem.
(31:41):
You have people that ownproperty.
They have mortgages on thesepieces of property, they own
this land, their homes have beendestroyed and earmarked funding
that is supposed to go back toAmerican citizens and populace
is getting redirected intosupporting the illegal
immigration of persons fromforeign entities that have no
interest in the betterment ofthe human condition in the
(32:01):
United States of America.
It's a blank check.
And it's a blank check, youguys, motherfuckers.
So to answer your question verylike as direct as humanly
possible, it is a travesty tothe American experiment that the
bureaucratic process has becomeone of self-justification and a
(32:22):
constant we'll just say mutualmasturbation of existence,
because one agency rubs off theother agency in order for them
to justify their existence, andthere is a constant tit for tat
game being played by all ofthese bureaucratic agencies and
FEMA's existence.
Do we need FEMA?
Sure, we can use a FEMA.
(32:43):
We can use a federal emergencymanagement agency, one that
understands the premise of howto manage funds, one that has a
holding bucket of money so that,in a disaster, we can redirect
that money in a more effectivemanner.
And also, do we need a femathat does what it does right now
?
The answer would beconclusively fuck no.
Yeah, fuck no, because it'sturned into an insurance agency.
(33:04):
There's a political agenda,obviously, obviously, I mean and
text messages that don't go topeople's homes that have Trump
signs.
Well, I mean, even with the,with the.
So look, I, I, I love the factthat we are a country full of
legal fired up, legal immigrants.
Yeah, but dude.
(33:25):
That's the answer.
That's the answer that peopleneed to hear from someone that's
been on the ground.
Here's, here's.
I said this to a Senator theother day, guy, and I got to
tell you this, and to you too,josh.
I said this to a senator theother day.
I said I just have a questionwhat sort of culture of
leadership, what sort of cultureof operational culture do we
have inside an agency wheresomeone thinks it's acceptable
(33:48):
to send a text message and aseries of instructions that says
avoid homes with Trump signs?
Moreover, senior FEMAleadership had a conversation
with me face-to-face, good, andthey were not bad people, they
were good people.
They wanted to quote helppeople, help people.
And after our conversation,they said hey, we want to help
(34:08):
you, help people.
We're having a hard time doingit.
Our interactions, we can't haveour fingerprints on it.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Damn Exactly.
Wow, what, why, why would?
Why would personnel, seniorpersonnel, representing an
agency designed to providedisaster relief and recovery
efforts?
Why would they say they can'thave their fingerprints on it?
Was it because we as anorganization were so outspoken
(34:36):
against FEMA from the get-go?
Or was it because we haveconservative standards or
conservative traits, because wepray in the morning and we pray
at night before we gooperational, and then, at the
end of the day, to say thanks atthe end of the operation, like?
Is that the reason?
Is the reason because there's adifferent agenda that's being
pushed by the currentadministration and by powers
that be inside of thebureaucracy that don't want to
(34:57):
see certain things?
I don't know.
I just asked the questionbecause I don't know what the
fucking answer is.
I do know what the actions onthe ground look like, and the
actions on the ground do notrepresent an organization who is
designed to provide disasterrelief and recovery.
Nope, and I think that's apretty damn good answer.
You'll be fired up, josh.
Hey, josh, pull another one ofthose ones out, man.
(35:20):
One more, pull another one.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Nah, tell them
there's a jam out there.
I know I'm about to roll in asecond, so my other question is
when let's say, right, you weretalking about it was eight miles
of shit just completely washedaway.
So when that gets to a point towhere you can actually walk
those lands and shit like thatand y'all can cut through stuff,
(35:44):
how many people would it taketo, let's say, cover on a day,
like once things are dissipated,to cover like two to three
miles of land?
How many people would it take,and then how many people in each
group like amongst that two tothree miles For what?
Like debris clearing and stuff?
Yeah, I mean even trying tofind people in the midst of the
(36:05):
fucking debris.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well, man, when
you're talking about search and
rescue on the front end, a lotof the effort that we had was
based on, like intel, rumor millmill stuff that was getting
pushed out on social media,things that we could find in
text messages, local communitiessaying, hey, we saw so-and-so
get washed down the river fromhere.
The biggest, the initial rescuepart wasn't saving lives of
(36:35):
people, it was getting access topeople.
Yeah, the biggest part of allof this was that what would
normally be search and rescuewas human remains discovery and
detection.
So there was a you weren'tgonna find somebody that had
(36:55):
been washed away down river thatmade it.
There's just too much debris andeverything.
The amount of the volume ofwater and the pressure of water
was moving through those, thosevalleys they say it was two to
five times more than that ofNiagara Falls the hydraulic
pressure that was coming throughthose areas um that's fucking
(37:17):
sad though it's, it's hard tothink about.
It's hard to think about thepeople that did get washed away
and lived are man.
They should go to the.
They should go to vegas becausethey're lucky, they're blessed,
they have a bigger purpose inlife and hope they don't
squander it because they'restill around.
But we still.
(37:38):
There are still missing people.
Now there's a lot of rumorsabout how many missing people
are out there.
People have made up their ownmissing persons lists which are
not valid.
They have no way to back checkthem.
They have no idea who'sactually been found and not been
found If you look at theofficial numbers, I think the
official numbers are somethingcloser to like eight to 12 total
people still missing.
(37:59):
Comparatively to when it started.
I think when we started thelist was at 17 or 1800 people
missing and my daughter andex-wife were on that list Wow,
and we found them and they cameoff the list.
But there's still people thatare missing.
The eyewitnesses stated andsaid we watched them wash down
river and some people werewashed away and were found.
(38:22):
You know, 12, 15 miles away.
Some of them may never berecovered because of the mud and
it could be under 100 feet ofmud 100, 100%.
They never find those poorpeople's bodies remains.
It's probably the hardest partof everything.
That's the reason why whatwe're doing right now is so
important, because there wassuch a dramatic focus of human
(38:47):
remains detection, such adramatic focus on helping
reunite families.
Yeah, and we were so focused onthe dead and it was heavy for
everybody and it still is.
I mean, you obviously liketalking about.
It is a hard thing tocommunicate about, and it's the
reason why, where we are inrecovery process, why it's so
(39:09):
important for us to startbuilding homes.
Yep, because if we don't startbuilding homes, the second
disaster is coming and that'sthe economic disaster.
And if we don't work toovercome that disaster, if we
don't demonstrate that there istruly and legitimately hope and
progress being made, made likemade towards recovering the
region, then the people that aregone will stay gone, the
(39:30):
businesses that are closed willstay closed and the economic
downfall of Western NorthCarolina would be complete.
Because this wasn't a smallevent, this wasn't one or two
businesses.
A majority of the business inNorth Carolina is found in those
.
It's 45% of North Carolina'sGDP.
(39:51):
In those 39 counties that werehit.
Holy shit, there's 111 or 112counties.
I think in North Carolina, 39counties that were hit make up
45 percent of North Carolina'sGDP.
I mean, this is not somethingsmall.
This is not regionalized orlocalized.
(40:11):
This will affect the entirestate.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
The number one source
of high-quality courts comes
out of western North Carolina,but it's changed for decades
even generations, yeah, forever.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, this is an
event that's not going to just
change the lives of those who'veexperienced it firsthand, that
survived, change the lives ofthe volunteers that came in.
Like, you just talked aboutyour buddy, he was like he just
keeps coming back.
It's, that's, that's the trend.
That's what's happened.
I woke up this morning,yesterday morning, before we
drove into town, we had we're,we're in nine weeks.
We had 40, 41 people,volunteers, 41.
(40:52):
Holy, we're nine weeks in, yeah, and there's 41 volunteers in
our talk.
This morning I got a phone call.
Hey, dude, there's like 45people here tomorrow I expect
there's going to be 40 pluspeople in the talk they got a
key.
I mean, dude, it's awesome,like, like it's good to see that
, uh, uh, people are providinghope for those, those people
(41:14):
that live there man.
You got to roll in this flat.
It's three 22.
Yeah, I think so.
He's getting blown up.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
We're telling him
he's like my wife's giving me
fucking shit.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
All right.
So, hey, hey, josh, we're goingto, we will, uh, we will, we'll
take a break, that way you canroll.
And before Josh rolls, I meancan you?
Can you, however, you canarticulate to the people down
there that you know we'rethinking about them, you know
we're going to, we're going tokeep, we're going to keep
(41:49):
pressing them.
Man, this is, we can't fuckingforget about this shit.
No, I think, I think I thinkthe only way keep pressing it,
man, this is we can't fuckingforget about this shit.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
no, I think, I think
I think the only way this shit
really happens and things reallychange is is with uh, is with
consistency, like if you're notconsistent, like even even us
wanting to help and try our bestto be able to support your
cause and everything that'sgoing on like it's not a one and
done thing, like it only reallyfucking changes if it's
consistent, like if, if there'snot consistency, there's not
shit.
That's right, that's exactlyright.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, yeah, man, hey
man, that was a good first half.
It was good, I got to fire itup dude, yeah, dude yeah.