Special ops vets form homegrown Redneck Air Force to ferry aid into NC mountains after feds come up short: Whos FEMA?

SWANNANOA, North Carolina — Hundreds of special operations personnel in North Carolina have formed their own homegrown rescue and supply operation in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene after they grew tired of waiting for the federal government to get its act together.The Post found an all-volunteer operation being run out of a Harley-Davidson dealership with ruthless efficiency and military precision.“Who’s FEMA?” ex-Green Beret Adam Smith derisively responded when asked about the agency’s presence on the ground since the deadly storm ravaged the rural western part of the state.“This disaster has definitively proven without a shadow of a doubt FEMA’s incompetence and incapability,” he said, noting that the agency didn’t even show up until Thursday — almost a week after the storm that has killed at least 232, nearly half of them in the mountainous west of the Tar Heel State.Unwilling to stand idly by after feeling his community was languishing with inadequate support from the government, Smith enlisted the help of a few good men and women to take matters into their own hands.This Harley-Davidson dealership has become a forward operating base, complete with a fleet of 35 helicopters that have flown hundreds of rescue, reconnaissance and resupply sorties.

Organizers are calling the effort the “Savage Freedoms Relief Operation,” but Smith says they’ve proudly adopted the alternate moniker — “the Redneck Air Force.”The dealership teems with current and former soldiers decked out in camo pants and army boots with handguns strapped to their chests and hips.Crop duster pilots, helicopter tour guides and special operations pilots — most of them off-duty or retired military — have answered the call from Smith and others in North Carolina’s extensive military community.They’re using their own aircraft to fly doctors, medicine, generators, fuel and food to isolated residents cut off from the world by the unprecedented floods to washed o...