Helicopter pilot threatened with arrest after rescuing people stranded by Hurricane Helene

A helicopter pilot in North Carolina was threatened with arrest after carrying out voluntary rescues of people stranded in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Jordan Seidhom sprang into action on Saturday after seeing a Facebook post about a family in Banner Elk who were running out of food and water. The small town was one of the hardest hit by Helene.

Seidhom is a Class 1 certified law enforcement officer and a pilot with nearly 1,400 flight hours. Along with his son, he is also a member of the Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department in Pageland, South Carolina.

“I thought, I have a helicopter, maybe I can help,” Seidhom told local station, WJZY.

After getting clearance from local airports to fly through the airspace towards Lake Lure, an area devastated by Helene, the pair sought to locate those stranded, and rescued six people.

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The next day, September 29, the Seidhoms were inundated with messages on social media with requests from other people with stranded relatives.

The pair were alerted to a couple stranded on their crumbling driveway near Lake Lure. Seidhom, concerned about the weight of four passengers, left his son on the mountain with the husband and flew the woman to safety.

They then made contact with first responders in a parking lot near the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge.

“Once we landed where emergency personnel were, I was met by a fire chief or maybe a captain, and he asked me who I was. I told him who I was, who I was with, just a local volunteer,” Seidhom told WJZY. “I told him my background experience, law enforcement, firefighting, and pilot and he immediately started helping with coordination.

“He gave me radio frequencies to coordinate with them on, set up a landing area for me to come back with the other victim, and just basically started the rescue efforts; the policies and procedures that you would take coordinating with someone from an outside source or outside agency.

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“And in the middle of the whole conversation and them blocking the road off, I was greeted by the — at that time I didn’t know — but the Lake Lure fire chief, or assistant chief, maybe. And he shut down the whole operation.”

At this point, Seidhom says, he was threatened with arrest.

“He originally asked me who I was. I gave him the same information, who I was with, my background experience, law enforcement, and firefighting,” he said. “And his response was, if you have that kind of experience, you should know that you should be coordinating with us.”

Seidhom said he asked the official for a specific reason he was ordering him to stop his rescue efforts and was told he was “interfering” with official operations.

“He said, ‘If you turn around and go back up the mountain, you’re going to be arrested.’ I said, ‘Well, sir, I’m going back to get my copilot [his son], I don’t know what to tell you.’”

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Seidhom said the official called over two law enforcement officers and again threatened him with arrest if he flew back up the mountain to join his son, and rescue the woman’s husband. He was instead ordered to the Rutherford County Airport to wait for Federal Aviation Administration officials to meet with him.

Seidhom insisted on returning to the mountainside to retrieve his son, but explained the situation to the husband after he arrived. Officials had told him the man would be rescued by officials in a “few hours,” he told WJZY.

According to the man, identified as Michael Coffey, he was later forced to swim to safety with the couple’s pet cat Cleo, with the assistance of an EMT crew from Michigan. In a Facebook post, Coffey wrote: “Man. What a weekend. We lost our new river house- completely gone. Got out about 30 min before it went and spent the weekend in our car because all bridges got washed away. Susan got a helicopter lift out and I swam across the river with Cleo (our cat) & EMT crew (from Michigan).”

The Seidhoms spent three hours at the airport, but no one from the FAA turned up. However, according to Seidhom, within half an hour of his arrest threat, a Temporary Flight Restriction was set up over the Lake Lure gap. Following the incident, Seidhom said he believes the Lake Lure fire official’s decision to order him and other pilots out of the rescue zone on Sunday put lives at risk.

“I’m sorry, if I had to do it over again, I [wouldn’t] have stopped and I would have rescued as many people until they decided they were going to arrest me,” Seidhom told WJZY.

A post on the Town of Lake Lure official Facebook page said: “Although we greatly appreciate all offers to volunteer, Town Officials are working to decongest the area to ensure the highest degree of safety in this rescue phase of recovery.”

In the following days, the town’s official posts have been hit with calls for the fire chief to be dismissed from angry residents, many of whom are seeking help for stranded friends and relatives.

The Independent has contacted the Town of Lake Lure for comment on the incident.