Article from The Tennessean: https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2024/10/09/nashville-airport-volunteer-pilots-take-off-hurricane-helene/75588664007/
By Hadley Hitson
More than a dozen pilots took off from Nashville’s John C. Tune Airport bound for North Carolina Wednesday morning carrying with them 5,000 pounds of relief supplies for victims of Hurricane Helene.
Nearly two weeks ago, the Category 4 storm devastated parts of the Carolinas, East Tennessee, the Gulf Coast, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. Deadly flooding killed over 200 people, left hundreds of thousands of others without power or water and knocked out entire roads and swaths of cell service.
As the destruction began hundreds of miles away, 20-year-old Belmont student and pilot Jacob Bealle lept into action. His nonprofit Props For A Purpose organizes volunteer pilots and their aircrafts to transport disaster relief supplies to areas in need, and it delivered over 9,000 pounds of supplies to Ashe County in response to Helene.
“We have volunteers that are just strangers coming together to help other strangers,” Bealle said. “You come out and see an event like this, and it just really shows how much people care.”
Through a partnership with John C. Tune Airport, home to most of the Nashville area’s private aircrafts, two rounds of relief supplies left Nashville for Asheville this week, totalling 21 participating aircrafts. On Monday and Wednesday, volunteers filled the planes to the brim with clothing, diapers, toilet paper, water, batteries, hygiene products and more.
“JWN proudly supports this charitable organization and its mission to leverage the power of aviation for humanitarian causes, disaster relief efforts, community outreach, animal rescue and medical response,” a statement from the airport said.
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority Vice Chair Jimmy Granberry and Commissioner Bobby Joslin were among the volunteer pilots who took off Wednesday.
Once the supplies arrived at the Ashe County Airport, a ground team that Bealle partnered with distributed them out of an airport hangar that has been transformed into a disaster relief center. And as for the survivors who can’t make it to the airport for reasons like lack of transportation, the ground team will make deliveries on ATVs.
“The first thing we do is find a ground team,” Bealle said. “It does nothing once we fly these goods over there if they just sit at the airport.”
