Former Green Beret helped people after Helene. Now he’s looking to Western NC’s future.
When Adam Smith first spoke to The Charlotte Observer on Oct. 8, it was a brief, impromptu interview before he jumped on a helicopter.
Volunteers worked quickly, preparing for the mission ahead, and occasionally pulled him aside to talk logistics. They had set up a base in the back of a Harley-Davidson shop in Swannanoa, a Buncombe County community devastated by Helene.
In October, Smith and his volunteers — many current and former service members — conducted medical evacuations across the mountains, delivered supplies and even dropped a generator off at a community center.
The operation, dubbed Savage Freedoms, started after he and a friend airlifted Smith’s 3-year-old daughter and ex-wife from their house in Black Mountain days after the storm.
“This Thanksgiving, I spent the whole day with my daughter, her mother and the former in-laws,” Smith, a former Army Green Beret, said in a phone interview on Dec. 5.
Helene damaged his former in-laws’ house in Waynesville when a creek breached the nearby banks and “washed out” parts of the inside, he said.
“Everybody this year was impacted and affected, and sitting down for Thanksgiving was pretty spectacular,” he said. “It was a … reminder of just how blessed we are to be able to sit down in our home, have a meal together and we have everybody still around.”
From rescue to recovery to rebuilding
Since Helene hit the mountains in late September, Smith’s team has conducted rescue missions and supply drops, built temporary bridges, delivered RVs to survivors, established distribution centers and more.
Now they have a new goal.
“The target is to build 1,000 new homes in Western North Carolina before we’re done with our operations on the ground here,” he said.
Like others, though, he’s run into snags with “red tape” in the county’s permitting process, he said.
Smith, who lives in Black Mountain, has been critical of the government’s response to Helene. But, talking to the Observer, he stressed he only wants to see results at home.
“I’m not one of those guys that wants to bash the government,” he said. “I simply want it to do what it’s supposed to do… If all we’re going to do is rescue people from the threat of death in order to deliver them into the threat of poverty, then what was the first rescue even for?”
Come September 2025, a year after the storm, he expects things to look largely the same in Western North Carolina. Though national and state media attention has already shifted, and though most of the world has moved on, there will still be much to do.
“I see the volunteer efforts still being on the ground,” he said. “I see homes being rebuilt. And I still see a lot of struggle.”
This story was originally published December 26, 2024 at 5:00 AM.