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Her brother’s home in us-regions, 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.”
FINAL TENNESSEE FLOODING VICTIM’S BODY FOUND
The weather was terrible and Boyers had to contend with hills and energy” target=”_blank”>high-voltage power lines< 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 … 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.
This image from video provided by Jeani Rice-Cranford shows Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers rescuing people from a rooftop, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021 in Waverly, Tenn. 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.
(Jeani Rice-Cranford via AP)
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 planet-earth, including disasters, before, but “the crime 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 energy” target=”_blank”>power lines<, for documentaries and for music” target=”_blank”>country music<
At one point, he spotted four people on the 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 — helplessly watching and listening to the screams — for more than two hours when Boyers showed up. During the rescue “there was a gust of winda>, and the helicopter kind of shifted,” Rice-Cranford said. “We all just held our breath. We were just watching with our mouths open, hoping and praying that he would be able to get them.”< still had not flown in because of the bad weather.
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Boyers said he heard from the woman who originally called him in her desperate search for a helicopter anywhere near Waverly. She said her family was safe, but he doesn’t even know if he rescued them or someone else did.
Pulling people from floodwaters isn’t the scariest thing he’s ever done, Boyers said. That would have to be flying through clouds on instruments only, with some of those instruments out of order.
“Literally, it just felt like I was working,” he said.
