Hurricane Helene: Elon Musk to the rescue, true stories of hope, and how we’ve been duped



While the aftermath of Hurricane Helene is still dominating the news cycle, Al Robertson and Zach Dasher got a front-row seat to the devastation — and are still dealing with it.

Robertson and his family were trapped in the Black Mountain region of North Carolina, while Dasher and his family were trapped in the Asheville area.

“Thanks to Elon Musk, we’ve got Starlink. Bunch of Starlinks got sent in. So I got Starlink on the top of the building, and then I’ve got a 6,000-watt generator full of gas outside and about eight extension cords to make all this happen,” Dasher tells the Robertson family on “Unashamed.”

“Did you ever think we’d be in our culture, where you open the podcast by thanking Elon Musk?” Jase Robertson jokes. “We laugh and we joke, but this has been a tremendous sobering moment for our history. A lot of people have lost their lives, and a lot of stories are just horrific.”


Dasher can attest to the horrific nature of the stories.

“I don’t know what the total count is; I mean, they’re still pulling bodies out now. Some of these people’s bodies will never be recovered, because they’re under 20 feet of mud, and these mudslides, and this river. Just, I mean, it’s horrific,” he tells the Robertsons.

While there are too many horror stories to count, there are also plenty of stories of hope as well.

“I’ll tell you this, though, to see God’s people swarm in has been humbling. That part has been beautiful. You know, in the midst of all the storm, to see God’s people come into this area in a way that I never knew was possible,” Dasher says.

However, while Dasher was overwhelmed with appreciation for good people who came out to help, he couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t much government aid.

“What’s happening in our culture right now is that we’re being slowly duped into believing that the government systems and programs are going to take care of us, but in a catastrophe like this, you see the incompetency of it,” Dasher explains.

“And you think, ‘Well, it's not possible for someone trained at the London School of Economics that sits in an ivory tower in Washington, D.C., to know how to fix something in Swannanoa, North Carolina,’” he adds.

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‘A war zone’: The Robertsons get trapped by Hurricane Helene, and it’s way worse than you know



Americans throughout the Southeast have been stranded by Hurricane Helene without power, water, or cell service — and many have lost their homes and even lives. The devastation is unimaginable, and the Robertson family has witnessed it all firsthand.

Al and Lisa Robertson were staying in Black Mountain, which he explains was hit with 20-plus inches of rain in two days — before Hurricane Helene reached them.

“There was just the perfect storm, and I say that in a negative way,” Al says. “This one had some bite to it.”

“First you’re just praying, you know, spare us, and then you start praying about the people down lower ‘cause you think of down the mountain, this isn’t going to be good. Lisa and I were staying at a little house, kind of pretty much close to the top. I’m praying because I was worried about a mudslide,” he continues.

When the morning came around, Al recalls that “it was like a war zone.” And after trying to get out of the mountains, they realized they were landlocked.

“We make it about half a mile on I-40 and mudslide,” he explains. “Trees on the road, all this stuff, can’t go this way. So then we’re trying to find is there another way around? Nope. Everything over there’s shut down.”

“So then you start thinking, what if we go south? Nope. Closed. There’s a river across the interstate,” he continues. “So we take off north, planning to get high enough up, maybe above the worst damage to cut across and then go east. We get to Tennessee, we’ve been driving a couple hours, and the interstate is collapsed.”

“We’re trapped, we cannot leave,” he adds. “We have no phones, we have no electricity at this point, we don’t even have a place to stay, but we do have family. And I’m thinking, I mean, there’s a helplessness that comes over you at that moment, because I got half a tank of gas and there’s no gas stations.”

As other people from out of town were waiting for places to open up, Al recalls realizing that those in electric cars were “doomed.”

“There’s no electricity for you to power your vehicle with,” he explains.

However, Al and Lisa did see signs of hope in the “rednecks” who were prepared and used that to help others.

“They helped other people. They would go to their neighbors' [houses], and we saw a whole truckload of people just going from place to place, helping,” Lisa says.

Tragically, there are still around a thousand people missing and over a hundred people have been confirmed dead.

“It’s going to wind up being devastating numbers for sure,” Al says, sadly.


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How Jase Robertson brought his own ATTACKER to the Lord



When Jase Anderson was a young buck, he once ran into a little bit of trouble.

When he befriended a girl who had a boyfriend, he thought they were just friends — but she thought differently. Then, the boyfriend caught wind of it.

“She asked me to come over for the Bible study, and next thing you know, I’m dragged and whooped over basically my faith because I was there for a Bible study,” Jase explains, adding, “But the good news is he came to the Lord a couple weeks later. The girl, she got alienated, and we went on about our merry way.”

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but I was there at the right time to bring him to the Lord,” he says.

“You took a beating for the gospel,” Zach laughs.

“I did not fight back. Only in words and in the Spirit,” Jase says while Zach continues poking fun.

“You didn’t give him the right hand of fellowship,” Zach jokes.

“I decided to preach the Gospel to him, thinking that would avoid the beating, but that didn’t materialize. But it did work out. It was a weird phenomenon that happened in my life,” Jase says.

Now, the two are friends — and his former attacker has even helped him out with his ministry.

“We’re friends; we’re brothers,” Jase says.


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9 Reasons People REALLY Go to Church | @Phil Robertson

9 Reasons People REALLY Go to Church | @Phil Robertson