Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers had just finished helping his fiancee earn her pilot's license on Saturday morning, and they were heading home to celebrate, when he received a frantic call from a woman in Pennsylvania. Her brother's home in the small city of Waverly, Tennessee, was underwater and he was trapped on a roof with his daughters. Could Boyers help? “I thought, ‘How would I feel if I told her I’m not even going to try?’” he said in a Thursday interview with the AP.
“It was nothing but tan raging water below me,” he said. “There were two houses that were on fire. There were cars in trees." A few people were out in boats, rescuing the stranded, and one person was helping with a jet ski, but Boyers was alone in the sky. He started flying up and down the flooded creek, grabbing anyone he could. Boyers, who co-owns Helistar Aviation, ended up rescuing 17 people that day.
To perform the rescues, Boyers had to maneuver around power lines, balance his skids on sloped rooftops, and hover over floodwaters. It took all the skills learned over 16 years flying. At one point, he spotted four people on the ledge of a roof of a farm supply store where he was able to set down one skid, making three different trips to pick them all up. One was a woman who said she had watched her husband get swept away and had become separated from her daughter, who was on the roof of a nearby gas station. Boyers touched down and rescued the daughter, too.
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“Every landing was pretty dangerous,” he said. He's already had a conversation with the Federal Aviation Administration about it. “I know the FAA can take my license away if they see me flying like that,” he said. He assured them that he did not charge anyone for the rescue, no one was hurt, and there were no law enforcement helicopters in the area. “I don't want to lie,” he said. “It was almost a little fun for me.”
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