YouTuber turns hobby into Helene recovery
By John Wellbeloved
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SWANNANOA, North Carolina (WLOS) — One way that Swannanoa firefighter Larry Pierson likes to spend his free time is surfing YouTube for videos on topics he finds interesting.
Naturally, Pierson turned his love of repairing things into a YouTube channel of his own called “Larry Does Schtuff.”
On the channel, Pierson shows video of him digging ditches with his backhoe, repairing engines or hydraulic snow plows, and even spreading salt and scraping snow during the winter months.
Pierson eventually discovered an unexpected benefit from posting videos on his channel.
“I realized very soon that my dad could watch it. He liked actually watching things on YouTube, and he’s in another state in West Virginia, and when he would see me repairing my truck or doing something on it, when we talked on the phone, we could talk about that,” Pierson said. “So it was one way to where he could see what I was doing, and I felt a little more in touch with my dad as it gave us more to talk about.”
His interest in working with large machinery came into use with Swannanoa Fire and Rescue in their response to Helene.
Pierson describes the challenges of trying to reach his neighbors and his wife in the storm’s aftermath.
“We had to go through mudslides, landslides, dozens and dozens of trees. We’re still trying to get up in this area to find, you know, we don’t even know what’s going on in the area here if there’s people that need to be rescued,” Pierson said.
With time and determination, they were finally able to reach the residents of the Bee Tree area that had been cut off by the floodwaters washing out the upper part of Bee Tree Lake Road and multiple private bridges, including his own neighborhood bridge.
“The bridge was still standing, but it was dropped. We had to raise it like 27 inches. But we had the excavator in here, and we had to actually fill in with logs and junk to make a pathway to here that we were doing rescues across this bridge for the rest of the Bee Tree Lake community because the road was gone,” Pierson said.
As the Swannanoa area continued to recover, his attention turned to figuring out if the bridge could be repaired or if it had to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch.
After months of discussions and planning with his neighbors, they were able to secure funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair the bridge.
With the help of some members from the Army Corps of Engineers, they had a plan in place to raise one section of the bridge to level it out and make it structurally sound. Pierson was determined not to disappoint his fellow neighbors.
“This was an unknown. How much can this really be done, and it could’ve hit a wall at some point where it’s not working, and we’re gonna have to go from scratch on a new bridge,” Pierson said.
But through hard work and sheer determination, the bridge was repaired and is now as good as new.
“It was immensely satisfying, and I’m grateful that this did actually work for my neighbors, and piece by piece we’re getting back to normal,” Pierson said.
Every small victory that local residents earn is a welcome sight, especially for Pierson.
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