Within mere minutes, volunteers from the Texas-based organization Operation Airdrop rushed to unload a semi-truck filled with bottled water. In under a half-hour, those same bottles were airborne from Raleigh-Durham International Airport bound toward a flooded Carteret County.
Founded a year ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Operation Airdrop expanded into providing service for Hurricane Florence with the help of local Triangle grassroot coordinators, pilots and partnerships with dozens of local and national disaster-relief organizations.
The organization moves supplies from municipal airports to boats in the flooded regions of North Carolina, many of which are where trucks or cars cannot access safely.
Dan Benedix, a volunteer pilot, said the organization delivered 29,000 pounds of food and supplies across North Carolina on Tuesday and approximately 55,000 pounds Wednesday.
“In Lumberton they’re unloading the airplanes from the terminal onto boats, and those boats are going to peoples' houses that have been stranded without food or water for the last three or five days,” Benedix said.
