A member of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit is urging government officials for more helicopter support as civilians are searching for “SOS messages carved in the mud” and rescuing individuals stranded by Hurricane Helene, including an 11-day-old baby.
In a video on X, formerly Twitter, Jonathan Howard, a member of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit, complained that the government is not sending enough helicopters to North Carolina to help with recovery efforts as residents remain stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Howard said he has been working with a non-profit organization called Aerial Recovery to locate and rescue as many individuals as possible.
“What they’re telling you is complete bullsh-t on the news, and these politicians don’t have a f-cking clue, and they’re lying,” Howard said. The Florida State Guard member warned that additional helicopters are needed to save the people still stranded by the hurricane.
Emphasizing the need to have helicopters to reach those stranded in the mountains, Howard said, “There’s no way to get with them or even communicate with them. I’m literally flying around in a civilian helicopter looking for SOS messages carved in the mud or painted on the ground, and we’re dropping down and saving them.”
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In the video, Howard also contradicted a recent USA Today report that claimed the Biden-Harris administration’s National Guard saved an 11-day-old baby from a hospital rooftop.
“No!” Howard said. “It was me, my buddy Charlie, and a civilian named Zeb with his own personal helicopter out of Wilmington, North Carolina. Without that civilian, that baby would be dead. And, the old lady we rescued after that, she’d be dead too because she had one day left of oxygen. No one was going to go get them.”
After conducting multiple rescue operations, the Florida State Guard member claimed that “there’s military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can’t do nothing.” As a result, Howard said that he typically sees “forty civilian helicopters” and maybe “two Blackhawks” in the air while conducting rescue operations in North Carolina.
Toward the conclusion of his video, Howard claimed that the government is “killing” the people stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene by not doing more to help them.
“I don’t know why they’re doing it. I don’t know what kind of conspiracy,” Howard said. “They are literally allowing these people to f-cking die in the mountains right now because we can’t get helicopters. They got money for everything else in the f-cking world right now, but if they could just get us helicopters we could fly out there and rescue these people.”