Hurricanes, tornadoes, and war zones. Now this.
I roll through a world that wasn't built for me, and I film what I find.
I'm James Lea, known as No Limb Jim. I'm a multiple amputee and a wheelchair user, and before that I was a TV cameraman who chased storms and a disaster responder who helped fly relief into places the roads couldn't reach. Now I point my camera at what blocks people like me: parking spaces, ramps, hotels, airlines.
Watch this first
7.7 million people watched a Harley block my access aisle.
Three brutal days in Las Vegas, and then a motorcycle parked in the hashmarks I need to get back into my van. That video is why most of you are here. If you've seen it, start with the guide below. If you haven't, this is the one.
Watch on YouTube
Start here
ADA Accessibility Guide
What the hashmarks mean, who can park there, what the law says, and what to do when someone blocks one. Plain English, with the violations I've filmed.
Read the guide
Life from a wheelchair
How I get in the car, through an airport, onto a shuttle and into a hotel room as a multiple amputee. The parts nobody shows you.
See the clips
Life after amputation
I went looking for hope from a hospital bed and found almost none of it. This is what recovery, work, faith and a full life actually look like now, from someone living it.
Start here
On TikTok
Where most of you found me. These four get the most play.
Disaster response
When the roads are gone, the airplanes come. I help get them in.
Since the 2010 Haiti earthquake I've worked with AERObridge, a nonprofit of volunteer pilots who fly relief supplies into disaster zones. I'm its Field Operations Chief, the person on the ground sorting out where the airplanes land and where the cargo goes. Haiti, the Bahamas after Dorian, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the big civilian airlift into western North Carolina after Helene. During Hurricane Laura I rode out the storm stuck in an elevator in Lake Charles, then helped evacuate 13 residents of a senior housing complex that everyone else had driven past. That is still the work I'm proudest of.
About AERObridge
Before the wheelchair
Forty years behind a camera, in the worst weather on Earth.
I picked up my first TV camera in 1983. Since then: more than 200 landfalling tropical systems, Jim Cantore and The Weather Channel, the Pentagon on Sept. 11, the Coast Guard off Cape Hatteras, and a Motel 6 in Texas where two of us sent tornado video over a dial-up line and changed how TV news gets its pictures. Those stories are here too.
Read the stories
Tell me where you've seen the same thing.
Send me the spot, the hotel, the airline, the parking lot. New videos, the stories that don't fit in a Short, and the fights I'm picking next.
About James
James G. Lea is a former freelance TV cameraman and storm chaser who worked for The Weather Channel, ABC NewsOne and CBN News, and who has intercepted more than 200 landfalling tropical systems. Since the 2010 Haiti earthquake he has served with AERObridge, a nonprofit of volunteer pilots that flies relief supplies into disaster zones, where he is now Field Operations Chief. In December 2021 he survived heart valve surgery that left him a multiple amputee. He now uses a wheelchair, flies several times a month, and documents what works and what doesn't for people with disabilities. He is also an Amateur Extra Class ham radio operator, call sign WX4TV, and lives in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Book me to speak
Accessibility, disaster response, and what it takes to keep going. Conferences, companies, schools and ham clubs.
Get in touch