Miami billionaire uses personal helicopter to help hurricane victims

A wealthy Miami man decided to use his personal helicopter to bring aid to Hurricane Joaquin survivors.

Several islands in the Bahamas were left “completely obliterated” by the Category Four storm, one journalist told the The Weather Channel.

That’s where Mike Fernandez, founder of MBF Healthcare Partners, came in to help out.

On Sunday, he spent the day flying his helicopter back and forth from Long Island to help those affected by the severe storm, NBC 6 News reports.

The storm’s winds topped 100 mph (about 160 km/h) across some parts of Bahamas, according to the Miami Herald.

Fernandez told the Herald that after speaking with friends in the Bahamas, he was motivated to help out with the relief efforts.

“I heard that nothing was happening down south, where all the damage was done,” Fernandez told the news outlet. “All we can do is provide help ourselves and do what we can.”

Fernandez and his crew even found and rescued a group of survivors that had been lost since the storm, according to NBC 6 News.

By Sunday night, Hurricane Joaquin had left some islands underwater, destroying homes, roads, airports and left the region without communications.

The airports submerged in water have made getting supplies to some of these regions complicated, making the shortage of clean drinking water on the islands difficult to fix, according to Local 10.

The Weather Channel reports that Hurricane Joaquin is on its way towards the Atlantic Ocean after also hitting Bermuda. It will transition to “a non-tropical low pressure storm by early Wednesday.”