Latest / APD Pod Squad / Episode 8; Helene Recovery, November 4, Captain Brandon Moore

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Episode 8; Helene Recovery, November 4, Captain Brandon Moore · APD Pod Squad

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pot Squad.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Helene relief recovery information and conversation.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me in a moment is Captain Brandon Moore, who led an expanded drone unit which played an extremely important role in the hours, days, and weeks following Helene.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: The storms arrived in September, and it's now November.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hard to believe.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Monday, November 4th, day 38 of the emergency response and recovery effort.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: It may be a different day when you're listening, so just be aware some of this information may have changed.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So once again, today's date is Monday, November 4th, and we thank you for tuning in.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: For the most up-to-date, complete information from the city of Asheville, go to AshevilleNC.gov slash Helene.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Also, make sure you like and follow the Facebook page for the Asheville Police.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Also, Asheville City Government and Buncombe County Government.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the two hottest topics remain to be storm debris and the water system.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: With the debris, it is currently being picked up by an outside contractor, and that process is going to take some time.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Try not to get frustrated if they haven't yet visited your neighborhood.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Bit of a broken record with the water, but there is progress daily, that I promise you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Might not seem like it for those of us that have gone without safe drinking water for over a month.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we're all getting familiar with the word turbidity.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: We've said it before, and I'll say it again.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: This water is not safe for drinking from the tap.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in the city limits or one of the adjacent communities of which use Asheville City water, you don't want to brush the teeth with it either, or anything like that.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to get it in your mouth in general.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Although it is safe if vigorously boiled for at least one minute.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: The water is safe, of course, for flushing toilets.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's also safe for laundry and showering, although, once again, avoid getting it in your mouth.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: But that's based on your level of comfort, your personal choice.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, me, my wife, my house, we've been showering with it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: No ill effects with the chlorine levels, it might dry your skin out a little bit.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've been using a moisturizer.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: We've been doing laundry with it as well, just no whites or anything on the nicer side.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Once again, just up to your level of comfort.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: If it does bother you, there's a number of community care stations set up across Buncombe County, 7 a.m.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: to 7 p.m.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: daily, offering hot showers, laundry, Wi-Fi, bathrooms, charging stations, water, meals, and really nice people that are working there as well that want to help you.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: All amenities are free to the public.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to cost you a dime.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Leave your wallet at home.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Please bring your own towels and toiletries for showering.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: However, there is some limited ones there.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you can get a complete list of all of those community care stations at ashevillenc.gov slash Helene.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just click the box.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: It says relief assistance and resources.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of water, you may have seen some aerial photos of the North Fork Reservoir Ringabell.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Those pictures and videos were taken by drones.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And drones have been active doing so many important and literally life-saving things since day one.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me now is Captain Brandon Moore.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Captain, thanks so much for joining me.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: You've been a busy guy.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've all been busy.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just one of many.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hard to believe it's now been more than a month since the storms.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think I'd believe that it's been a full month, but uh it's really hard to believe that much time has elapsed.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the only way any of us have a uh gauge is uh the home reminds us just how much we've been away and how long it has been.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's true.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: We've had great supportive families, so we need to give them a shout out during this because my goodness, without the support that we're all getting at home from our wives, husbands, families, kids, you know, extended families, all that, we probably couldn't get through this.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I could.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first actual day that I took off, I think I've shared with you, but uh my family, my wife specifically, took my phones, cold turkey, could not have any communication at all.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing she would do would check to make sure there was no emergency.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But other than that, couldn't couldn't communicate with work.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we need more of those days.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all do, and I think we we're trying our best to maybe keep a really good touch and a pulse to our people to make sure that they're all taking that time because nobody did or wanted to in the beginning.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: But now as we hopefully get to a more stable position with a lot of work still left to be done, we can make sure that we're getting them the rest they deserve.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Like a lot of our leadership staff, your job kind of became different during this.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Normally you're the captain of the patrol department, uh, and that is your purview.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, however, uh for this, for this disaster, you became the man running essentially uh an incredibly valuable drone program, uh of which it was, of course, ours uh with the fire department, a very robust department to begin with.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then with all the outside help we had, the uh outside companies that came, it was incredibly active and life-saving.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we knew the capabilities that this drone unit had.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: However, I don't know if we truly know until we're tested.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think anybody would have offered up the option to have this test.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But man, did we get one?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the uh the pilots, the officers that served those dual roles, they stepped up and they stepped up big from rescue missions right away to overwatch missions uh to just then working with the FEMA crew when they got here.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the outside resources that came in to assist us, and I think we'll touch on a few of those, but we had some really good partners that showed up without even being asked, and they did some incredible things for the community here.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, if if ever there was a time uh for a program to have gotten their feet underneath them in at the right time, it is our drone program, which is working very, very hard.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I know that some people have been skeptical about it because they kind of look at it as a big brother.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, government's always watching you, and we've tried our best to reassure them that no, this is this is incredibly valuable, and here's the many different ways.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, with the search and rescue that it performed uh during this, I think never more evidentiary than this here.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think there's some key pieces that came out of you know, looking back that we realized that we didn't know right away.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the drone unit and the way it was set up here, we had what's called drone first responder.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's an actual drone in a box that sits on the roof of this building.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that can be deployed from anywhere in the world utilizing a company that does the management software, which is Paladin.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, without me even having to ask the moment they saw this storm hit, they knew I wouldn't have the manpower I needed to fly, like we probably should be doing in and around the downtown area.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they took it upon themselves with permission in a quick text message to make sure we would let them.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they flew remotely for us.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have enough visual observers here to meet the compliance.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: However, we didn't have enough pilots to man this thing.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so they flew over a hundred and something missions for us.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: They spent some significant amount of time and man hours actually trying to cover as much ground as they could.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think they did 267 miles worth of flights.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they spent over 23 hours from Houston.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't local.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't here.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then when things calmed down a little bit, they sent me two pilots for the next three weeks.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they flew for us and they worked alongside us and several others.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But to kind of hit on your piece of where we were and where we got to without having that already in place, we wouldn't have had that capability.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about some of the things they did.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, people can imagine, okay, we've got these little whirly birds in the air.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: What are they doing?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's where it comes into play first on.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: At the moment, we finally got people on the ground post-storm and could start directing rescue efforts.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what better way to direct rescue efforts from the air?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, usually that's only done with a helicopter.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Historically, they've only been done with a helicopter.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now we can do it in many micro locations utilizing these drones, and they were all out.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we had officers in the field flying the ones that were assigned to them.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: We had officers here leaving from this location.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: But from that first onset, we started directing rescue efforts to people who were trapped or needed assistance.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then the New Jersey crew was here, and that FEMA uh directed task force uh had us assigned to us.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a funny story now, it wasn't at the time, but we have this drone capability, and they come in and they're the experts in this search.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, We don't we don't need your drones.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have a systematic way in which we do this.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we stuck around and we stuck with them because that was our assignment.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: However, the next day they came back and apologized and said they'd never do an operation like this again without the drones.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the Overwatch, which is just specifically staying with a rescue team, staying above them, was extremely beneficial.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: They had a capsized boat, uh, they had uh individuals in in precarious locations that having that overhead view back piped directly back to the emergency operations center allowed their team leaders to do even more.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It also allowed us to cover ground faster.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: We could put a drone in an area, they could go ahead of where that unit was heading, specifically direct them to locations of things they saw or didn't see, or people in places that needed assistance.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That just gave us that one leg up, that one more uh factor that allowed us to move through that search quicker.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then you start talking about the resources that came in.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then we had others show up uh that we were partners with already, uh, one specifically that we weren't a client of.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Scatio is the only North American drone manufacturer there is.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are not a SkyTeo client.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: However, SkyTio showed up with their staff, their engineers, and their owner.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: He showed up, he spent the night on uh one of his salesman couches in in Fletcher, and he came here and he spent all day with us.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we haven't purchased a single thing from this company yet.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: They showed up just to provide assistance to this community.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And did they?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Skydio is known most in the industry for their mapping abilities.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what we were able to do in these search patterns is also map these roads and bridges, which has now, a month later, become more evident and a need than we ever thought it would be.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because now we're getting requests from city and internal as well as external folks to get these maps out to see what the bridges damage looks like, see what roadway damage, parks and wreck to overview, places they can't get to yet to kind of know and understand what they'll be looking at.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that has also shown a benefit that none of us ever actually expected.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Captain Brandon Moore joins me, and we'd mentioned helicopters briefly, the traditional method that people are familiar with.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we heard them in the skies above Asheville and the surrounding vicinity.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a conversation over the weekend with some friends, and like I I wasn't old enough, I didn't go to Vietnam, but the sound of those helicopters almost made me imagine what it might have been like somewhere like a war zone like that, because of all the activity.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, helicopters are amazing in what they do, but there are things that drones can do that helicopters cannot because of their size and their maneuverability.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Looking at some of those bridges for the uh Department of Transportation, uh, things like that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Looking inside of cars, getting that close, feet away, to see if anyone was inside if that vehicle's capsized.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were very fortunate.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And both having internal uh base drones as well as uh large platform drones.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would be remiss not to speak to what came alongside in our needs.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: We found ourselves in positions that we were rigging up ways in which we could put sensors attached to a drone to check the air quality for a hazmat team that was about to go in a building.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: We rigged up um some cord to try to rig and send a radio out to a location on the Biltmore estate where there were 15 people trapped on what now became an island.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there's drones that do this work.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We just didn't have them.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had several individuals step up, made some donations specifically to our 501c3, the foundation, and asked that that be purchased to provide us those drones.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have one of only two um large base drones.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fly cart, it can carry up to 88 pounds of payload, which allows us to take supplies more than just small items, but we can actually carry medicine, food, water, things to people and places.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we will talk about again in the future is what did we learn from this and how can we benefit others in the future?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, this will not be the last of these storms.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: We hope in here it's the last for a very long time.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But we will then see this kind of devastation again somewhere else in the country.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can prevent an entity from not having to work through the first three to five days of things we did trying to get this right, we can deploy and we can assist them.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we'll be working towards with the fire department is creating a response team that the FEMA use could provide this type of a response for any entity wherever it happens.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh some people that maybe have a drone at home or their friend that has a drone.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what you're working out of your house is not the kind of equipment, although it's similar, of course, to what was being operated during this.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: The one large one that you had mentioned.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that thing.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was huge.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's eight feet in span.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: That thing is absolutely massive.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the ability to drop off supplies was invaluable because it actually happened on multiple occasions.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so these guys worked really hard.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, to learn a new platform really quickly, but also to reach out to those in the industry that knew and had operated these before.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we also need to make sure we mention and realize how many people showed up.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some are partners and some not, like I mentioned.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: But Drone Sense and Axon Air, uh, they're a partner of ours.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've been with Axon for a very long time, and they came on scene, sent personnel here for three and a half weeks, and they helped us work through back end management other issues, training issues utilizing drones, because there was valuable knowledge that they sent with the people that arrived, uh, as well as some others.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were very fortunate to continue to work with our partner who provides us drones and airworks.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we one of the first things that came out of the phone call I made into the EOC the night of uh was the chief himself answered the phone in the EOC, and it was a broken communication, as we all knew it was for the next four weeks or even now.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But chief, what do you need?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, batteries for drones and more drones.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, that's what we're utilizing right now, and that's what we need.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so AirWorks allowed me to go directly to their warehouse where they were not at, get into it, and take everything I needed.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Every battery, every drone platform, anything he had in his warehouse, he let me take.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I drove it up here.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So a partner like that uh was invaluable in a time like this.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he and his family showed up here for the next two weeks on multiple occasions.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some one instance I have to give him credit for, he left the hospital uh having a checkup of his own and drove straight to Asheville so he wouldn't miss a day in assisting us.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I cannot thank Stephen Baxley and Airworks enough.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those uh individuals that with his organization just bent over backwards to help us to ensure that our community had everything we needed for this.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then to include, you know, specific drone providers, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: We had Autel reach out, uh, we had T-Mobile reach out with their emergency crew to say, Hey, I'm here, how do you need us?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a very odd conversation, too, because I don't I never met the guy before.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I get these emails that say, Hey, I'm here, I have this, and I can help.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, man, am I glad I called that guy because did he help?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed up big and he gave us uh access to uh aircraft we wouldn't have.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us uh technical knowledge that we wouldn't have received any other way.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now I think we've uh formed a lasting bond where we will train and work with that crew for future events as well.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the death count, you look at it, and it's a big number.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh those that were missing, and still some that are missing, that's also a a big number.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: But those are both numbers that probably could have been much larger if not for the uh the immediate call to action and the response of some of these drone units that were able to see people while they may have not had that much time left, people that are holding on to homes and trees and on roofs of buildings near the floodwaters.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think a lot of people know and understand what occurred in the time leading up to this and and the ways in which emergency management did their best to get the word out from you know our individuals driving around with a loudspeaker on top of their truck to tell people if you haven't heard, you've got to go.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, two responding teams and units.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the New Jersey Task Force One team that I spoke of, they were dispatched, but they had no idea where they were going.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they got dispatched on Tuesday.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Wednesday, they're coming down the interstate, and Thursday, when that actually hits, they know they'll be going to Asheville.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the moment that it cleared, they were here working to include over 10 uh unmanned aviation units from around three different states, Georgia, South Carolina, uh, and Virginia, all sent us crews to immediately start working these areas.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I do have 43 pilots within the department, but they all had assignments.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: They all had work they were doing to pull them off of that.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, wouldn't have been able to get the work done that we needed.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it was instrumental in trying to get the amount of coverage that we did.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and overall, I think it's it's necessary to kind of speak to what work we did, but they did over 700 actual missions over the course of three weeks and counting.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: They collected over 40,000 images and videos, which is a lot.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like an an essentially that many, but to to have that many flights, that many missions, and that many teams come together, uh, that took uh some planning and we kind of had to throw it together really quick.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it did.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It affected the way in which we attacked this problem.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope both the good and the bad we learned of what we did we can use to make this an easier response in the future.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in addition to uh the search and rescue things that they performed, they were also some of the first to get eyes on the reservoir dam and to see what that looked like, a chance to map that, which can help them, of course, look at repairs and get our water system back on as fast as they did.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, a lot of people got to see in the news where we had these events occur, uh tragedies happen, and then uh political figures uh show up in a lot of different views and thoughts behind that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the the main reason, and I want to believe they come is because that's the way we drive a lot of attention to the need that we have.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have a huge need.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And with the water system crippled the way it was, the only way to do that is to get those images out, to get the message out.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we were sitting around talking.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they flew planes and they flew helicopters, but you still can't get the images that you could get.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I can give them a live feed.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And under 30 minutes, I can get a crew out there and I can give you a live feed.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we sent a drone image of the dam and what was occurring in that area directly to city county managers, state officials, the governor's office.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: They could see this to truly get an understanding of what would come out much later.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: But they can see it now, and we can give it to them real time.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that also, as you said, helps those engineers determine how they're going to tackle this issue.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do from this point on?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, they have responded again and done additional mapping solutions there because what we're having to do is rework every bit of that system.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was crucial in providing as timely of a response and hopefully never to take anything away from the amount of guys that were out there digging ditches and putting pipes together.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They were doing some amazing work to get our water back up.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But hopefully, we gave them that leg up and what they wouldn't have had otherwise.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, who knows how much longer it would have taken?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because not only was the water system itself at North Fork Reservoir been damaged to the extent that it was, the roads to get there also had to be completely rebuilt.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the air was the only way to get there with the drones to see what what they needed to see.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So while people were rebuilding roads and getting ready with the supplies, they kind of had a head start.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I think it it hopefully allowed them an opportunity to spend more time thinking and working on the fix than how they get there to see it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's what we hope to do.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But none of that also would have been possible if we didn't actually have communication ability.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's key to speak about with the loss in cellular, the loss in fiber connections.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: No one communicated at all.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then we had our actual radio system go down.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's never good either.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so all of the backups to the backups failed.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing at that time we had access to that could get a signal is a Starlink.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I would be remiss if we didn't talk about how number one we actually came to acquire the number of Starlings we had, but the way in which we did it, you know, just getting on the radio, speaking with KISS Country, uh, Mark Starlink specifically, and Eddie Fox about, hey, what is it we need?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: What are we looking at?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are we seeing?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is day two, maybe into day three.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think I spoke on both of those days, but said we need to be able to communicate.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I said, the only reason I'm talking to you now is I'm standing next to a Starlink, one of only a couple we have, because our provider showed up with them.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have what we need to be able to make this missions happen for the drones, but number one, number two, then to speak to just communication efforts throughout the city.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, just out of nowhere, you know, Eddie says, Well, I think that Greg Biffle has got a hold of some Starlink.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and I'm like, Well, that's that's fantastic.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be great.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to get a hold of those.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, good luck with that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I hear they got a bunch of those.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we hang up.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: We hang up.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to myself, how do I call Greg Biffle?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have his number.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't okay, well, I know a guy.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I I actually still standing next to the Starlink.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I called home and I was able to get my wife to run up the hill to our neighbor to tell my neighbor to call her dad, who lives out in Charlotte, and I knew he had some connections.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this all took about an hour.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: He calls me and he says, Brandon, it's Ron.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, Bron, can you call Greg Biffle?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Brandon, I don't know Greg Biffle.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Well, it's worth a shot.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, But I I can call Joe.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ron, I don't know who Joe is, but if you if you can call him, that'd be great.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, it's Joe Gibbs.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that'll work.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: That'll work.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing I know, he calls me back and says, Hey, you need to hang up with me and answer your phone.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was Greg Biffle.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Brandon, this is Greg Biffle.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I say, Well, Mr.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Biffle, thanks for calling me.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I hear you have a need.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And within an hour, we had eight Starlinks flown to us, dropped off on missions helipad, and we had them in the field working within a couple hours.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: It just showed the immense support we.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Had and the way people stepped up, uh, otherwise not having that access.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: We could be speaking a foreign language to some people right now.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Joe Gibbs, former NFL great, as people know, head coach for so many years for the with the Washington Wed Redskins at the time, became a big NASCAR bigwig and a team owner of which Greg Biffle drove for him, Greg Biffle championship driver over those years.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that whole connection there.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, they're based in Charlotte.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I've got to learn more about Greg Biffle just by scanning through his account.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: The man does just some amazing work just because he wants to.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he and his wife have stepped up in many instances.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the first, and I can guarantee you will not be the last.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it it really does make you take a moment to realize folks that do not have to do what they do, but they step up and they do it every day.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they came through big, not just for Asheville and not just with Starlink's uh they flew supplies, food, water, clothes, access to they gave everything they had.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: He had his private helicopter flying everywhere it could.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they did a lot for this area, for the region.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in getting to uh go to the concert for the Carolinas.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like most, sat in that line in that queue of Ticketmaster, and it popped up.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was 15,000 in line.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how that was gonna work out.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I was able to go, I was able to actually take my kids because I thought it was important.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was important for them to see what happens when people come together for this type of event.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and to get to hear Luke Combs shout out to to Greg Biffle and his wife resonated with me more because I got to speak with him during this event, but hopefully resonated with a lot of people that he did that amount of work for complete strangers.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: He went to work for folks that he may never get to meet, but he knew that they had a need.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: That says a lot.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so many stories that I guess we all need.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: We need to hold on to these and realize that people are inherently good people.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, all the companies that helped us for no questions asked, uh, to the individuals like Greg Biffle and Joe Gibbs, to all of those musical artists that came together, Eric Church, Luke Combs, James Taylor.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching at home.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm not crying, you're crying.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because that was just you tell me fire and rain and Carolina on my mind.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have a little bit of a tear, if you've been through it, we've been through in Western North Carolina, then you don't you don't have a pulse.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we need all of that right now.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was perfect timing, right?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Luke speaks to how hard it was to pull that together in under 28 days.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it was crazy.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I'm awfully glad he did it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also glad he he took the time even to away from his own family, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And time that he probably needed to be doing other things.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is it because he's local and he grew up here specifically, it's that he has a lot of friends and family around here that were directly affected and he knew how bad it was without having to come here.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the greatest things I think he said on stage, and it resonated with my son, was there's a lot of things that I'm good at.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And coming to you is not it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm good at is this right here.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided instead of coming to you and trying to pick up a hammer, figure out ways to dig people out of trenches, that that's not my time best use.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: My 10 best use was what we did here, and I hope it helped.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it did.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, it's going to, and it will continue to help uh just because of what it did, number one, for an uplift.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone needed that moment.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: They needed, even in maybe reviewing it now, getting to go back and watch some clips from it, will always provide that.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then also the monetary donations that were provided, and all of the people that stepped up, from those artists uh to the Tepper family, from the the Panthers, yes, uh, to anybody that that was a part of that, which is a lot of sponsors, to generate over$24 million.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, to stop the concert and hear that Dolly Parton just called up.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's huge, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, I was hope everybody was kind of waiting to hear that she was about to walk out.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: That would have just shut the place down.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Randy Travis was there, though.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Getting Randy Travis there too.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just, you know, we had to tell, you know, even our family that this was an event like no other, and it was done, every single one of them, with the correct mindset and the heart placement of we just want to find a way to help.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they did.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And for all the Western North Carolinians that were there personally, it had to be a huge catharsis.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, the feeling of togetherness with like you knew every one of those 82,000 people that were there and they felt the same thing.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't think there's a single person that left out of there.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: If they hadn't already, they do now truly know the gravity of what was facing out here.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And how appropriate that it was rain delayed.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tragically appropriate, I guess, in a way, but a two-hour rain delay for something like that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost just like, of course.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, standing through it, you you can't help because it's human to get irritated, and then you stop and you're thinking about just that moment.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not gonna not gonna get upset about this at all.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I think it was it was only fitting uh anybody that says that God doesn't have humor.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: He absolutely does, and he loves on us in that way, uh, just to make us take a moment to step away from ourselves to realize what really matters.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to hearing more stories of heroism, and there's so many that we're going to be sharing on the APD Pod Squad podcast.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Captain Moore, thanks for joining me today.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for having me.