Alone in the sky, pilot and fiancee save 17 in Tenn. flood
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers had just finished helping his fiancee earn her pilot’s license last week, and they were heading home to celebrate, when he received a frantic call from a woman in Pennsylvania. Her brother’s home in 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. “She just so happened to call the right person, because I’m the only person crazy enough to even try to do that.”
The weather was terrible and Boyers had to contend with hills and high-voltage power lines on the way to Waverly, a small city about 60 miles west of Nashville. Just before reaching the town, he set down in a field to get his bearings and realized the internet was down, making it impossible to pinpoint the house he was looking for. He flew on anyway.
“As soon as I popped over the ridge, it was nothing but tan raging water below me,” he said. “There were two houses that were on fire. There were cars in trees. There was tons of debris. Any way debris could get caught, it was. I knew no one was going to be able to swim in that.”
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, said he ended up rescuing 17 people that day. He’s proud of that, but said he’s the one who should be thanking them.
“I literally prayed just days before this that God would give me some meaning in my life, and then I end up getting this call,” he said.
He has flown over disasters, including floods, before, but “the cops are usually there, and my hands are tied. This time there weren’t any.”
Saturday’s flooding killed 20 people, taking out houses, roads, cellphone towers and telephone lines, with rainfall that more than tripled forecasts and shattered the state record for one-day rainfall. More than 270 homes were destroyed and 160 took major damage, according to the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency.
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, including for a television news station, for documentaries and for country music stars.
It was also a powerful experience to go through with his fiancee, Melody Among, who acted as his co-pilot, spotting power
lines, giving him sips of water and even taking the controls at times. “Her and I will be bonded to those people for life,” he said.
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.
The rescues of four of those people were caught on video by Jeani Rice-Cranford, who lives on a nearby hilltop and helped shelter the victims in her home afterward. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Rice-Cranford said. “Not in real life.”
Rice-Cranford and others had been lined up along the roadside for more than two hours when Boyers showed up. During the rescue “there was a gust of wind, and the helicopter kind of shifted,” Rice-Cranford said. “We all just held our breath.”