After praying for God to show him that his life had meaning, a helicopter pilot and his fiancee maneuvered around power lines and floodwaters to rescue 17 people from Tennessee floods. 'I'm the only person crazy enough to even try to do that,” he said.
This image from video provided by Jeani Rice-Cranford shows Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers rescuing people from a rooftop, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021 in Waverly, Tenn. Boyers, who co-owns Helistar Aviation, said he ended up rescuing 17 people that day. He’s proud of that, but said he’s the one who should be thanking them.
The weather was terrible and Boyers had to contend with hills and high-voltage power lines on the way to Waverly, a small city about 60 miles west of Nashville. Just before reaching the town, he set down in a field to get his bearings and realized the internet was down, making it impossible to pinpoint the house he was looking for. He flew on anyway.“As soon as I popped over the ridge, it was nothing but tan raging water below me,” he said. “There were two houses that were on fire.
He has flown over disasters, including floods, before, but “the cops are usually there, and my hands are tied. This time there weren’t any.” Rice-Cranford and others had been lined up along the roadside — helplessly watching and listening to the screams — for more than two hours when Boyers showed up. During the rescue “there was a gust of wind, and the helicopter kind of shifted,” Rice-Cranford said. “We all just held our breath. We were just watching with our mouths open, hoping and praying that he would be able to get them.”
“I’m in a little hole with power lines all around. It takes enormous energy to take off vertically like that,” he said. So he left the man briefly and then came back for him. “I just kept doing that over and over again until I was low on fuel.”“Every landing was pretty dangerous,” he said. He’s already had a conversation with the Federal Aviation Administration about it.
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