Pilot Threatened With Arrest While Helping Hurricane Helene Flood Victims

A pilot trying to rescue victims of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina was threatened with arrest.

Jordan Seidhom, a South Carolina pilot, told Queen City News that he successfully brought supplies to people in need and was able to use his helicopter to rescue people who had been stranded due to flooding. He was then inundated with requests for help, and planned another day of airlifting people to safety.

Even though he had spoken to authorities at Charlotte-Douglas Airport and local authorities, on his second day of providing assistance, things changed. Seidhom and his son, who is also his copilot, were rescuing a couple from a precarious situation. Seidhom decided to rescue one person at a time, so he took the wife to safety and left his son with her husband. When he arrived with the wife at a parking lot near Lake Lure Flowering Bridge, he saw some first responders.

“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 the outlet.

Seidhom, a volunteer firefighter, told the first responders his background and learned that they were also from out-of-state and helping with the rescue efforts. While the group was coordinating, a local fire official came up to the group and threatened to arrest him if he returned to help the remaining victims.

“He originally asked me who I was. I gave him the same information, who I was with, my background experience, law enforcement, and firefighting. And his response was, if you have that kind of experience, you should know that you should be coordinating with us. And I said, I’ve been coordinating with everybody as I’ve been here just the day before, speaking with local law enforcement, other rescue personnel,” Seidhom told the News.

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Seidhom told the official that he was going to get his son and the other victim and then would leave the area to avoid any further issues, but the official, according to Seidhom, told him to leave them.

“I’m going back and getting my copilot,” Seidhom said he told the official. “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, I don’t know what to tell you.'”

Fearing that he would be arrested, Seidhom said he flew back to get his son and had to leave the remaining victim behind after explaining the situation.

Seidhom said that a temporary flight restriction was set up in the area he had just been in within half an hour of him being threatened with arrest. That restriction was lifted the next day and Seidhom resumed his rescue attempts.

He told the outlet that he wishes he would have ignored the arrest threats to help more people.

“I’m sorry, if I had to do it over again, I would have stopped and I would have rescued as many people until they decided they were going to arrest me,” Seidhom said.