When Jordan Seidhom woke up Saturday morning, he saw a Facebook post that tens of thousands of people were commenting on and sharing. A family was stranded on a mountain in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
They ran out of water a day earlier and just enough food to last less than two days.
Seidhom, the former head of the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit, knows a thing or two about finding people. He researched the mountain chain where the family was located and found a place to land on his mapping software.
He loaded bottled water and food into his helicopter and headed toward Banner Elk.
“I thought, I have a helicopter, maybe I can help,” Seidhom told Queen City News Chief Investigator Jody Barr. His son, a high school junior, also went along.
Both men are volunteer members of the Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department in Pageland, S.C. Seidhom is a Class 1 certified law enforcement officer and a pilot with nearly 1,400 flight hours.
He first contacted the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport’s Air Traffic Control tower to get clearance to fly over the airport. Seidhom said he got the clearance and was allowed to fly over the airport, which is a direct shot to the gap in the mountains he needed to get through in Lake Lure.
Once in the Lake Lure area on Saturday, Seidhom said he first landed at the nearest airport and met with multiple law enforcement officers and first responders to coordinate communication channels with them and to find out what was needed and where he should go to help.
Seidhom said he left the supplies he collected at a drop-off point for the family in the Facebook post, then lifted off toward Black Mountain to find where he could help.
The first rescue was of two women who were stranded high up on a mountain. Seidhom took the pair to a community center with supplies and generator power. The women didn’t have water or food at the time.
“And there were two other ladies who were out of town. They were staying at an Airbnb. They only had one day of supplies, which was gone by Saturday.
They didn’t have any food, water, no running water, no power. And we were coming back this direction anyway, so we actually took them to Charlotte-Douglas Airport and they were able to fly home from there.”
“Not anybody who was in danger or they were just trapped. No food, no water, no access to power and water. We were going to lift them from the area, nice landing spots and take them back down to civilization.”
When the pair reached Lake Lure, they saw a bloated Broad River and the damage the raging floodwaters did to the homes and roads along it. The water, like a full-throttle buzzsaw, ripped through the small Carolina mountain towns taking life and property with it. (READ MORE)
