While all this is happening, the National Guard is deployed to Israel instead. The government aid is non-existent right now. They’re not doing anything for anybody. It’s their neighbors who are helping each other. And believe me, when the government comes in, they’re going to be doing things against the people who are there as well. But listen to what happened to this helicopter pilot. He was seeing all these messages on Facebook and other places about people, help, I’m stranded, I’m about out a cell phone battery and all this other kind of stuff, and cell phone coverage is going in and out, I don’t have any food or water, I need some help, he’s got a helicopter.

So he decides that he’s going to help. He and his son. And I want you to hear what this preening little, petty, fogging bureaucrat did. This is the original post that I was reading when I decided to go up and help. It’s a long post, but she’s saying that her kids and family and animals are trapped. No way out, no supplies, and the only way in or out is accessible by helicopter. Limited cell service and no water since Friday morning. I thought I have a helicopter and maybe I can help. Jordan Sittem piled food and water into its helicopter Saturday and headed up toward Benner Elk, the only way through, a mountain gap in Lake Lure.

This is the mountain valley that you would have to fly to, to get to Black Mountain where we were escorting people out. This is a mountain range and this is a mountain range, the only place to fly through with bad visibility, low cloud coverage is Lake Lure. The cries for help from people stranded without food, water or electricity hit social media soon after the flooding last Friday. My parents are stuck there, their address is ****, Benner Elk, they are in the first condo. If you receive this, please give me a call back.

Thank you. Sittem’s phone started lighting up on Saturday with people begging for help. I can hear the desperation in her voice. This is multiple phone calls I’ve received like this, voicemails, text messages and you can hear people desperate for help. Sittem and his son rescued four people on Saturday and spent the night in a nearby pilot’s lounge, then decided to fly again Sunday morning. I spoke with my son, which is my co-pilot. I said hey do you want to go back out and try to help today and his response was there’s so many messages I don’t think we can’t not go help.

Sittem and his son were headed up to Black Mountain. Flight tracking shows no flight restrictions in place Saturday or Sunday morning when Sittem flew through the Lake Lure gap. But that was all about to change. The Sittem spotted an older couple waiting for help, then landed in what’s left of their driveway. Hey, I want you to let me get in, you step out and go out, help her in, put her back in the back, get her strapped in, I’m going to take her down, come back, I’ll take him, I’ll come back and then I’ll get you, okay? I originally left my son co-pilot on the side of the mountain.

It was kind of unstable so I didn’t want to put more weight in the helicopter to lift back off so I left my son with the other victim and I was just going to take one person down at the time and you can hear me in the video talking through with the victims and with my son what we’re going to do. Three minutes away, Sittem spotted a group of rescuers just down the river. He landed and found someone in charge. Told him my background experience, law enforcement, firefighting, pilot, he immediately started helping with coordination.

He gave me radio frequencies to coordinate with him on, set up a landing area for me to come back with the other victim and in the middle of the whole conversation and then blocking the road off, I was greeted by the, at that time I didn’t know but Lake Lure, fire chief or assistant chief maybe, and he shut down the whole operation. So at that point there was, I felt like the company weren’t any further and again he asked me to leave and I said hey I have no problem getting out of your area if that’s what you want us to do we’ll leave no issue.

At that point I asked him you know what was the reason I had to leave them there and he said again you’re interfering with my operation I just need you to get out of the area. I said sir I’m I don’t know where you because I said so how my training is and I’m not going to leave personnel behind I’m going back to get my co-pilot. 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 co-pilot I don’t know what to tell you and he said I’m letting you know and at that point he waved for two law enforcement officers to come over and told me that again if I go back up the mountain I would be arrested.

He flew the three-minute trip back picked up his son and left the woman’s husband behind. I’m sure he was flooded with emotions and trying to rescue other people and I just felt that it was best at the time to leave so I did follow his instructions and I had a conversation with the female victim before I left apologizing and explaining she she was standing there she heard the whole conversation and they were both very very surprised very upset the husband as I was leaving off of the side of the mountain at that point separated from his wife he was he was upset.

I can only imagine. Cinnamon is nearly 1400 flight hours turned his chopper around and headed back to South Carolina passing people waving for help along the way. As I was actually leaving to go back to get my son the original chief or captain that I spoke to his crew and himself they came back over and said hey man we we can’t tell you to go get the victim we can’t even ask you to go get the victim but we can tell you if you come back with the victim we’ll have you a designated landing spot and they they won’t we’ll make sure they don’t come over here.

So there was no flight restriction when you went in? No no flight restriction when I went in it went in place 20 or 30 minutes after the confrontation with mr. BLEEP. You feel like that was coincidental or do you think that that was because of what happened? I don’t think it can be coincidental when there has not been one in place the day before doing rescue operations the night of the morning of that took place after our altercation. I think there would have never been a TFR put in place have we not had that conversation.

If I had to do it over again I would have stopped and I would have rescued as many people and until they decided they were gonna arrest me. Well for now we’ve chosen not to name that Lake Lure fire official because communications in and out of that town are still difficult. We want to decide if it’s a story and if and when he responds to our messages we will include that. The good news is I saw a video of a Coast Guard helicopter landing in Lake Lure this morning so hopefully some of those mountain rescues are underway today.

From Pejal in Jodar. Well only a couple of days after this all happened and out of the National Guard maybe they scraped some up that hadn’t sent off to Israel or Ukraine or something right? Yeah we come last with everything if we come at all don’t we in the minds of Washington they are dead set against us in every regard. The National Guard in these states has been massively deployed to Israel instead of serving their communities where the devastation now reigns. You’ll also hear rumors about the death of cash and how they are greatly exaggerated because cash is king in times like this.

Absolutely is. One person put up this is the update I just got from my lineman friend in Asheville. Went up Old Fort Road where it connects to number nine whole area is gone. A hundred-foot ravine where houses used to sit. Kids walking around naked asking where their parents are. People begging all uppercase begging for water. Black Hawk helicopters from FEMA are flying around I don’t want to talk about the smell of the dead bodies I’m in disbelief. Let me get their days later are they helping anybody? Who knows? But we got these little you know fire chief or assistant fire chief doing his Barney Fife impersonation.

I’m telling you, you’ve got to get out of here right now, or I’m gonna throw you in jail. Amazing, this guy—former law enforcement officer, firefighter, helicopter pilot, 1,400 hours—you can’t help anybody because, you see, too many people in government prioritize the power of their office and their uniform over what happens to the people. These are the types of people who will do whatever the higher-ups tell them, and they don’t care. They’ll execute you if they’re told to. These are the Milgram experiment, the Nuremberg people. To them, authority is everything—their authority, the authority above them. They care nothing for their fellow man, nothing at all.

As I pointed out, Whistler, when he was in high school, won a competition where he talked about how a local tornado was handled. The police and sheriff’s department came out to keep people away from the downed power lines, but other than that, it was volunteers—contributing companies, individuals—taking food, water, and supplies to church parking lots, where church people handed them out to others. That’s what’s happening here again as well. Thousands of North Carolina residents are looking to local churches for supplies and prayers. People are broken. They said more than 5,000 people sought help at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville. Volunteer support like this, in an emergency, can get all this stuff out before the federal government even puts its pants on, because you know they’re partying somewhere.

A member of the local church assisting with disaster relief efforts, distributing basic supplies in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destruction, said the crisis has left the community broken but united. “I was hearing story after story. People are broken. It was incredible what I heard today,” senior pastor Justin Alexander posted on Facebook. About 5,000 people, in a town of approximately 15,000—about one-third of the population—drove through the church’s parking lot, 25 miles south of Asheville.

And again, this is the same type of thing we saw in our small community, while FEMA was lording it over with law enforcement and all the rest—bullying people, bossing them around, not helping anyone at the coast during a major hurricane. When the federal government gets involved, that’s the way they respond. Unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is that the churches are helping people. Some local officials are even starting to say, “I’m in charge here, get out of here, you can’t help anybody, we’re gonna wait for the official people to do it,” and all this other nonsense.

But they also talked to a woman who is no stranger to helping people in a crisis. She’s actually the executive director of a women’s crisis center in Asheville, the Ascend Women’s Center. Her crisis pregnancy center in West Asheville made headlines in 2022 when it was vandalized by the Antifa-affiliated group Jane’s Revenge. She was there among the hundred volunteers and staff of the church, dispensing food, water, and basic hygiene products to residents throughout the day on Monday. She said, “I found that when I would ask people to pray about stuff, they would tell me things to pray about—their home, their missing loved ones, or whatever the need was. But they were all saying, ‘I just don’t know what to do.'”

One young mother told her that she was rattled, as her husband was helping remove the hundreds of downed trees from the roads. She noted that she wouldn’t have been able to feed her infant if she hadn’t had the forethought to sanitize 25 baby bottles before the storm. She had gotten down to her last bottle of water by the time she reached the church.

This is why I like to remind people, especially in situations like this, whether it’s a natural disaster, man-made, part of an agenda, or even war, preparation is key. You can find resources like the Civil Defense Manual by Jack Lawson at civildefensemanual.com. It’s essential to think about the preparations you need to make. Jack has compiled advice from experts, including free advice on how to ensure you have access to clean water in crises like this. There’s even a free chapter available on civildefensemanual.com, showing how thorough and comprehensive the information is.

Getting back to this young mother, who was just about out of water for her babies and had made it to the church, she started crying when I first started speaking to her. She said, “It’s just so overwhelming.” After I prayed with her, she reached her arms up. I didn’t know her, never met her in my life, but she said, “Can I hug you?” I said, “Absolutely.” So we just hugged through the car window. She embraced me and wouldn’t let go, sobbing in her car.

Even if their houses are spared, many people are straining under the trauma of witnessing the shocking scale of devastation in their community. Everything is just gone, and they’re wondering what they are going to do next. Many of us are now wondering what is going to be done to them—are they going to lose their homes? Was this planned? Many people are saying this looks a lot like Maui. It’s looking worse than Maui, frankly.

Despite the widespread suffering, she remains hopeful. She said there’s absolutely an opportunity for the gospel amid the darkness. “That’s why we’re asking people if we can pray with them today, to give them spiritual hope in the midst of this crisis, this devastation. As we were praying with them, giving them food and water—all the things they needed—we were just letting them know that there is hope, that there’s peace. None of this caught God off guard, even though we’re all caught off guard by it. He’s still going to provide the needs that everyone has, so we were trying to give them that spiritual hope today.”

She said this is going to take years, not weeks, to recover from. People don’t even know where to turn for the basics right now. She added, “It’s not that I doubt God or His sovereignty, just that I’m struggling so much with the loss and the destruction. How do people come back from this?”

This is one of the age-old questions: why do bad things happen to good people? The Bible says, over and over again, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, from Isaiah to Romans, that there are no good people. There’s none who’s good, not one. All of us have turned to our own way. We’ve all raised our fists in defiance to God, one way or another. We’ve all been involved in cosmic rebellion. So the real question is, why do good things happen to bad people like us? Because good things are happening to bad people like us all the time.

The gospel is what God did for rebellious people, sending His son to remove their sins as far as the east is from the west, to forgive that rebellion, to let people start again, and to never have that brought up again. Just keep that in mind—that is the good news, that God sent His son to make peace with us. Really good things have happened for really bad people. None of us deserve anything that we get—that’s all grace and mercy from God.

Hundreds of thousands are dead and missing in Appalachia. Up to 150 or more people have been verified as dead. They found bodies in trees and other horrific places, but there are still hundreds of people missing, and it’s unknown what their fate is.

One lady posted about what is happening with the looting.

She said she wanted to share some things people may not know about what’s happening in the North Carolina mountains in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

She explained, “If you have friends or family headed into the mountains or who live there, the looting has picked up major steam. I was advised yesterday by a county sheriff to make sure that anybody out and about is carrying—and in his words, ‘carrying with the safety off.’ There are very aggressive people out there. And I’m just gonna go ahead and say this: it’s not because they’re necessarily awful; they’re desperate. Desperate people do desperate things, y’all. And why are they desperate? Because there’s no water in some of these communities. We have neighbors in North Carolina with no water.”

She continued, “And all I can say is this: the government ain’t coming to save you, not now, not ever. Because they don’t care about you—the people—anymore. It is up to the citizens now. We have to step it up.”

She then shared how floored she was by her community’s response. “My community, which is a little over an hour away from the affected areas, showed up at donation sites with water, diapers, formula, liquid IV—you name it. People brought all kinds of things: bleach, vinegar. They were ready to help. And we’re gonna take more donations today, and we’re so grateful for everything, because I’m gonna get it into the hands of actual volunteers.”

She said she asked people, “Why are you bringing this to me? Some of y’all don’t even know me.” And they responded, “Well, we don’t trust the relief organizations anymore.” She remarked on how we’ve lost many of our organizations to grifters and liars. “We have to rely on each other,” she said, “because that’s how this country was built—patriot by patriot.”

She emphasized, “As a realtor, I know my realtors in the mountains, and I’ve talked to them, and they know their neighbors too. So I’m getting your donations into hands that will get them into other hands. And everybody who sent me dollars, I’ve got teams of shoppers out there, and I’ve got receipts to prove it. We are not grifters—we are neighbors. And to the patriots in the mountains, if you see this, if your family sees this, hear me now: you are not forgotten by the rest of North Carolina. And if you’re not in North Carolina, there are still ways you can give.”

Then she reminded people, “But let me just tell y’all something—you cannot eat money. You cannot drink money. So for those of y’all that thought money was your god—and by the way, that includes our freakin’ elected officials—it’s not your god.”

She said that during a morning run with her friend, she told her, “Tell your children, this is why you keep a stash of water on hand. This is why you keep a stash of food on hand.” And she advised those not in affected areas, “If you can take your donated items and send them to the mountains, then send them with a friend. Make sure you’re sending truckloads so that we don’t overload the roads, because our first responders are overwhelmed.”

She also expressed gratitude toward Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his aid to North Carolina, saying, “Thank you, Governor DeSantis, for doing more for North Carolina than North Carolina’s governor has. I’m very grateful for your National Guard, because we have to help each other, y’all.”

She urged, “Share this with somebody who doesn’t know what’s happening in North Carolina. They need to know. They need to know that there are entire towns gone. Chimney Rock is gone—a beautiful town. Swannanoa is gone. Montreat is gone. Other towns are damaged beyond repair. That means our geography has changed, our culture is at risk, but most importantly, our people—our generational people—have lost their generational homes. This ain’t about your granite countertops anymore.”

She continued, “Listen, y’all, tell somebody how they can help. I am but one resource, but there are people I know all over North and South Carolina gathering up goods and trucks. Somebody as far away as Massachusetts is putting together a truckload. Let me know, and I can connect you to where to take things. The Baptists are doing a great job out of Boone. Samaritan’s Purse is on the ground. I trust those two organizations. I wish I could trust more, but I don’t trust this government. But I trust the people of North Carolina.”

She concluded, “The biggest thing you can do is pray. Pray right now. Pray fervently that people will turn their hearts back to God, and pray for a hedge of protection around all those who have seen things they should never have had to see.”

Finally, she shared one more story before ending her video. “A lady came to my donation site yesterday, and her grandson—he’s ten years old—has been living in the mountains with his mother, who works at a VA hospital. They’re getting the kid out today because they can finally get him out. They’re worried because he has seen things he should never have to see. When you have children that are seeing bodies on the ground and towns gone, we’re going to have to answer for that one day, y’all. Please pray. Please do something. And for those of y’all who have already done something, I can’t thank you enough.”

She finished with a powerful truth: “Well, that’s the truth. She gave it to you straight. It’s what I’ve been saying for the longest time. When things get tough, the government is not going to be there. And you better hope that they don’t show up, because when they do, they’re going to make everything much worse—much worse.”

She concluded by advising people to organize with their neighbors and prepare for themselves and with their communities. “That’s why I recommend this book,” she said, referring to the Civil Defense Manual at civildefensemanual.com. “It’s a great resource to help you start thinking about this kind of stuff so that you can prepare before it happens.”

Lastly, she mentioned, “You’re listening to the David Night Show. You can find all the links to watch or listen to the show at thedavidnightshow.com.”

See more of The David Knight Show on their Public Channel and the MPN The David Knight Show channel.