Finally tonight, turning a hobby into help for those desperately in need.

Dozens of pilots from a Lakewood based flying club have been collecting donations and scheduling flights in their own personal planes to bring supplies down south to towns that were badly damaged by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Many of the organizers remember the devastation left here by Superstorm Sandy, giving their mission even greater meaning.

Raven Santana has the story.

I carried a gentleman with his drone equipment, and I took him to Asheville, North Carolina, where he surveyed the three mile long mudslide as well.

As they were concerned that there might be dams that would break.

David Williamson is just one of more than a dozen private pilot to members of the Jersey Aero Club in Lakewood that is using his talents and love for aviation to help those who are now in desperate need of supplies in areas that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

And he's using planes like this to help transport donations.

I saw this as an opportunity to to help people that needed it.

That's where general aviation, I think, can come in, where roads are closed down and remote areas are inaccessible.

Yet there are small airports there.

You can't send a 737 in there to deliver a bunch of stuff or a U.P.S.. 747 but a plane like this can get in there and deliver much needed supplies.

There's a mile of a mudslide that you can tell, you know, the roads are gone, houses are gone.

We actually flew over chimney Rock.

The the pile of debris at the end of that was like 2 or 3mi .

It was insane.

Just cars, trucks, trees, houses, rooves, like sheds.

You can see everything.

It's it was hard to for the brain to wrap around, you know.

Cody Colburn has been spearheading the relief efforts since October 1st.

He got to see firsthand what the devastation look like during a recent trip.

Colburn says it all started after he received a call from his sister, who lives in an area that was impacted.

Originally, it was for oxygen tanks for people that were out of power, near my sister's police department.

And then it switched quickly to like to food.

Baby stuff survived, like, as if somebody had lost literally everything.

What started as a one time trip has now erupted into a full scale operation.

From that first little corner of the office, there, it grew to filling the office to where we it was hard to walk through the office, and then that ended up not being enough space.

So then stuff started to grow outside and then all sorts of volunteers just appeared from my perspective, out of nowhere to help sort.

And when missions were identified, like this airport, we need to take this to this airport.

They would have a pallet ready, so an airplane would just show up and they would load all of the stuff into the airplane, and they would go, based on whatever it was that needed to go to that airport.

It was quite an amazing operation.

And volunteers say on average, they fly out at least once a day, every day to deliver thousands of pounds of these donations.

So we've taken, you know, mid-fifties and trips and flights we've taken definitely more than 50.

We've flown between 38 and I'd say 45,000 pounds of supplies.

That being like diapers, baby food, insulin, EpiPens, chest seals, stitches, staple guns, you know, everything.

But we've been to multiple areas.

There are some return trips to some of the airports because they need more supplies.

You know, there are some airports that have stopped taking supplies because their hangars are packed.

But we've found other airports and, pastors and people in towns that, you know, they still have yet to get stuff.

So we're still flying out that way.

And on average now it's down to about, you know, with weather, it's down to about 1 or 2 planes a day.

Coburn says so far, there have been more than 130 volunteers in about $130,000 spent to support this operation, which he says will continue until their help and donations are no longer needed.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.