Interview: AST3 Lawrence Nettles, USCG

Transcript

Q: Could you please state your first name, your last name, and spell your last name?

AST3 Nettles: Lawrence Nettles; N-E-T-T-L-E-S.

Q: Okay. And what is your rate in the Coast Guard?

AST3 Nettles: I’m an Aviation Survival Technician Third Class.

Q: Okay. And how long have you been in the Coast Guard?

AST3 Nettles: I’ve been in the Coast Guard for about, I think over ten years now.

Q: Now Petty Officer Nettles, you are known as “Noodles”, is that correct?

AST3 Nettles: Yes, everyone calls me “Noodles”.

Q: Okay. Can you tell us why?

AST3 Nettles: I just like to be different and “Noodles” is very close to my last name and it’s a crazy name, so they just gave a crazy name for a different person.

Q: And the Commandant calls you “Noodles” too?

AST3 Nettles: The Commandant does call me “Noodles”.

Q: Okay.
Now how long have you been in the Coast Guard?

AST3 Nettles: I think a little over ten years.

Q: Okay.
Can you briefly give us an overview of your career path that led to you being stationed here at Air Station New Orleans?

AST3 Nettles: I graduated boot camp and I went to Coast Guard Cutter Buttonwood in San Francisco, California. I spent about three years there. After that I went to “A” school in Elizabeth City and became an AST. Then after that I went to Air Station Clearwater, Florida, spent four years there and I have been here for three years now.

Q: Okay.
And prior to Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast, what kind of preparations were you making personally and what was going on here at the station?

AST3 Nettles: Just running around with our heads cut off. Everyone at the station was just packaging and boxing anything and everything that we could and tying it down, and at home I grabbed all my personal stuff. We took our cats to Baton Rouge to my wife’s parent’s house and then I went back to base and flew to Lake Charles and my wife went to Tulane Hospital. She was going to ride out the storm there and I was going to be on the ready crew.

Q: Did she have a connection with the hospital?

AST3 Nettles: She did. She is a PICU nurse; she’s a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit nurse.

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: I left the house pretty much accepting the fact that I was going to lose everything. Everybody said that the West Bank was going to go first before anything else; that the West Bank would flood before anything else, and so I was expecting that to come. I was expecting to come home to nothing. You know I pretty much just accepted that fact.

Q: Okay.
So after the hurricane blew through where did you go, what did you start doing; you were involved in the rescues?

AST3 Nettles: Yes, I actually had the first rescue of the storm.

Q: So you came back here to Air Station New Orleans?

AST3 Nettles: No. What happened was we were in Lake Charles and we decided to follow the storm and when the eye of the storm was right next to New Orleans we were down south doing rescues before the storm even passed New Orleans. When we flew in we decided to fly down south below the eye of the storm. On the way in we heard a mayday by a frantic woman explaining to us that her daughter and her grandchild were on a boat and they needed help and assistance, and that was the first mayday call and the first search and rescue of the storm. We flew down and we zeroed in on them at Port Sulphur. We found them in an aluminum boat in the middle of a neighborhood underneath some trees. The water was about ten feet high. She explained to us that her daughter’s daughter was a four-month old premature girl, which is, premature children are very susceptible to any kind of environment. They can get sick very easily. The boat was directly underneath some trees. So they had to lower me down into the water. From the water I reached the boat and got into the boat. I made sure everyone was okay. I took the daughter and the granddaughter and put them in the basket. They also had three dogs with them and I put one of the dogs in the basket with them and then hoisted the other dogs up. The hard part was lowering the basket down to me. We were directly underneath tree limbs so they had lowered a trail line to me and they had lowered the basket while I was holding it with the trail line, and quite a number of times the basket or the cable from the helicopter would get caught or wrap itself around tree limbs so I was constantly breaking tree limbs trying to get the basket and cable clear. I put the daughter and the granddaughter in the basket and the dog, I sent them up and they lowered the basket down to me again. I took the grandmother and the two other dogs and put them in the basket. At that point in time the boat shifted and went further underneath the trees. Now we hoisted her up. They all hit a few branches and we got them clear of the branches; broke a few branches getting them clear. We got them up to the helicopter and they were fine. At this point in time they tried lowering the vessel down to me and the boat was completely underneath the trees at that time. So I ended up taking the basket with the cable, throwing it into the water, throwing myself into the water and having to get into the basket from the water because the boat was not clear of trees.

Q: So you finally got them hoisted?

AST3 Nettles: We got them hoisted. It was the first SAR case and just everything went downhill from there.

Q: It escalated you mean.

AST3 Nettles: It just escalated, yes. You know it was amazing.

Q: Where was this neighborhood; where is it in location?

AST3 Nettles: This is in South Louisiana, several hundred yards between a river and a marsh . . .

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: . . . between the Mississippi River and the marsh, and everything was gone. Everything was just destroyed.

Q: And you got this call over the radio?

AST3 Nettles: I got this call over the radio and she called from the radio on the . . . .

Q: The little skiff boat?

AST3 Nettles: . . . on the boat that they found. It was a moderately sized fishing boat. I think they found it and they crawled into it. It had a cabin in it where she was able to turn the radio on and mayday out to us, and so we heard them.

Q: Did she say how she got into the boat; like was her home wiped away and she just happened to have a boat or did you get any details?

AST3 Nettles: No, I never got any details on how she ended up there and I did find out that it took less than ten minutes for the water to rise ten feet, so I’m sure that was pretty scary for them.

Q: Now where did you end up taking her?

AST3 Nettles: We were flying back north finding a safe place to put them and they found some police officers later and dropped them off. On the way up there we saw some more people on the levee. They dropped me off at the levee, I grabbed the person, put that person in the helicopter and they left me on-scene.

Q: This was the 17th Street levee?

AST3 Nettles: No, this is a levee down on Port Sulphur . . .

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: . . . between basically the swamp and the city and everything in the middle was ten feet underwater, if not more in the neighborhoods; houses, buildings, everything like that.
We found this gentleman down on the levees. We went down, picked him up. They left me there for weight problems, you know, and they said, “Noodles, go find more people.” I did that. When they took off I started running up and down the levees. I found two more people walking on the levees and one of the gentlemen that I found told me that they saw some more people on some roofs; stuck on some roofs. Well I didn’t have the helicopter but that wasn’t going to stop me from helping people. I walked about a mile to where the gentleman told me he saw some people and I started screaming for them and I saw them about a hundred yards on a house; a half-collapsed house, in the middle of this water. I tried to figure out a way to go out and get to them because the fact that the water was not dangerous, I mean the water was very dangerous. You don’t know what’s in the water; what kind of animals are in the water. There are a lot of snakes. Every time I was walking up and down the levee there were just big snakes going everywhere because that was the only dry ground. I walked up and down the levee and I found a small pirogue. I grabbed this pirogue – I know the term pirogue because my wife is Cajun so she taught me all these things – I grabbed the pirogue and I drug it about half a mile back to where these people were at this house and took the fins; my swimmer fins, put a fin on each hand, got into the pirogue and paddled out to these two people.

Q: What is a pirogue?

AST3 Nettles: A pirogue is a canoe with a flat bottom.

Q: Oh, okay.

AST3 Nettles: It’s very small, very unstable and really hard to control.

Q: Is it like a kayak?

AST3 Nettles: It’s very much like a kayak.

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: I get out there, I find the two gentlemen and they have a dog. So I put the two gentlemen and the dog and myself in this pirogue and start paddling back with my fins, and I realize something; pirogues are not made for more than one person. At that time I realized we were going to sink. I put my fins on as fast as I could, jumped into the water and started pushing them. They couldn’t make it and the pirogue sank. I grabbed the two gentlemen, had one in each hand by the scruff of their necks on their shirts, laid on my back and I swam them in, and the dog followed us. I got them to the levee and at that point in time another helicopter came and picked us up.

Q: All right.
Now after you did these initial rescues where did you go? Just give us a progression of events.

AST3 Nettles: After we dropped the people off that I picked up with the pirogue we flew up to Air Station New Orleans and a different crew picked me up. They dropped me off at the air station and I waited for my crew to come pick me up. They picked me up and at that point in time we went to Violet, Louisiana. We went to Violet and there is a much more residential area – this was just south of Chalmette – and the entire neighborhood, the entire city, was under about eight feet of water and there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people on top of the roofs and we had just started picking people up. We were prioritizing. We were trying to pick up children first. We were trying to pick up women first, elderly people, whoever we knew was going to be in immediate danger more than anyone else we would pick up first. So from rooftop to rooftop we’re trying to pick people up and at one point in time when it got dark we went down, we found this elderly man and his son and the elderly man explained to me that his wife was . . . how they busted through a roof; a very small hole through the roof in the attic, and they said his wife was down there. Well they lowered me down. I looked down. I had my crash axe with me and there was a hole maybe about a foot and a half wide that they crawled through and I looked down and there was a very large woman in the attic looking straight back at me. I told her, “We’re going to get you out of here.” I called up the helicopter and I said “You guys go ahead and take the people back to safety that are in the helicopter now. I need to take some time to bust open this roof.” A crash axe is a very small hand axe which is very blunt. It’s not made for actually chopping wood. So using it on wood is almost pointless. So I spent the next 30 minutes . . . well the first next ten minutes of it was getting the initial roof off. And I got a hole, pried a lot of it out, opened it up, looked down and I looked at this woman and I realized she is not going to fit through the roofing frame. So I ended up, for the next 20 minutes, chopping two by eights; the actual roof frame, two of those away through this hole so she could fit through this hole. As I said, a very large woman. At that point in time a second rescue swimmer; Petty Officer John Rice, came with their helicopter and he came down because I asked for assistance through the radio, and he came with the Quick Strop. I went down into the attic. He came to the top of the roof and we wrapped the Quick Strop around the lady and I guided her up from the bottom through the roof up to the helicopter with Petty Officer Rice. That was my first roof busting and we got really good at that through the whole storm.

Q: Do you know about how many you had to do?

AST3 Nettles: I think I only did two. I did the first one and a second one. The second one was really not a big deal. That was in Hurricane Rita.

Q: And by then did you have a regular axe?

AST3 Nettles: Yes, we had a regular axe and it was the crash axe that made it special.

Q: Yes.

AST3 Nettles: I could barely feel my arms when I got back it was so bad.

Q: Now is that a piece of equipment; a regular axe, that has been incorporated into . . .

AST3 Nettles: Yes.

Q: . . . your regulated, you know . . . ?

AST3 Nettles: Rescue items, oh yes. For the rest of . . . after Day Three when they started shipping supplies to us we started carrying axes with us just for . . . and a few of us actually had chainsaws. I got to carry a chainsaw. Unfortunately I never got to use the chainsaw and I was really hurt by that because I really wanted to use that chainsaw. But after about Day Three we all had axes. They gave us nice big wood-chopping axes and we started carrying that wherever we went.

Q: Yes.

AST3 Nettles: But after we picked out the lady up through the roof; after breaking through the roof and all that, we just commenced picking more people up in the dark, as many as we could. We’d bag out. I’d get a few hours of sleep or as much sleep as I could and then get up, find something to eat and just go right back at it again for the next day.

Q: Now describe your feelings when you actually saw all the devastation, when you had an opportunity; when you guys were coming and you saw all the flooding. What was going through your head?

AST3 Nettles: I couldn’t believe it. I was awestruck. I just could not believe it. And as much as being awestruck I didn’t think about it too much because of the fact that all I needed to do was my job, so I thought about my job. I didn’t think about the fact that my wife was in the hospital working. I didn’t think about what I was going to eat that night. I didn’t think about all the damage done. The only thing I looked at and the only thing I thought about was looking down and finding people that I needed to pick up. That’s all I thought.

Q: Did you have an opportunity to call your wife, or because the communications were disrupted because of the storm you really didn’t talk to her all that much?

AST3 Nettles: I didn’t talk to my wife until a week after the hurricane hit and that was when I actually found out that she, at that point in time, she was evacuated from Tulane Hospital. They told me they had a possible hostage situation at Tulane. She told me that she and the other people in the parking garage were getting shot at from the helos. They had to take care of people and stuff like that in the complete darkness. So I didn’t get to talk to her for a week.

Q: And did she stay at the hospital?

AST3 Nettles: She stayed at the hospital the entire time.

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: I actually think she went through more crud than I did.

Q: Is she still in Baton Rouge?

AST3 Nettles: She is in Houston right now and she is staying there with her sister, and I don’t think she has a job right now. So we’ll have to see what happens.

Q: And you’re here on the base in RV City?

AST3 Nettles: No, my house is actually fine. I’m living in my home.

Q: Oh, okay, so you didn’t have any damage?

AST3 Nettles: I didn’t have any damage whatsoever. I was lucky. I had a few . . . I shouldn’t say whatsoever. I should say had a few leaks and that’s it. And the only thing that did bother me is the fact that I’m going to have nightmares cleaning out that refrigerator.

Q: [Laughter].
Now how many missions did you participate in?

AST3 Nettles: Countless, I don’t know.

Q: Well were you working seven days solid?

AST3 Nettles: I worked for the first four or five days solid and then they sent me to Mobile, Alabama to the ATC to get some rest. I think it was for four or five days that I worked nonstop and I was the first person they sent away, and I felt guilty for leaving my brethren. I felt guilty because I felt like I needed to be there with them. You know after, I mean, they sent other people to take rest but those first three or four days there were a lot of rescues that I don’t remember that were highlighted in my mind and everything else is a blur.

Q: In hindsight though, wouldn’t you say they did the right thing sending you over to Mobile so you could rest up?

AST3 Nettles: Yes. Between flights when I was sleeping it would take a very long time for me to sleep because I would close my eyes and I would see rooftops. I would close my eyes and I would see people screaming for me.

Q: You would relive what had gone on?

AST3 Nettles: Yes. Everything that I saw, it would just completely go through my mind and it was just the fact that I could not get out of rescue mode. When I went to Mobile I had a hot shower, which I hadn’t had for four or five days. I had a hot meal which I hadn’t had for four or five days and I had a nice comfortable bed. That first two to three days I stayed here I slept on a small single mattress with another rescue swimmer.

Q: That’s here in the station?

AST3 Nettles: Yes, here in the station.
And when I got back out of Mobile I had a Critical Incident Stress Management person come talk to me. It’s only then where I could actually start to relax and pull myself away from that ordeal and it was beneficial, and I really needed it, I did.

Q: Now how long were you there in Mobile?

AST3 Nettles: I was there for about 24 hours and then they sent me back.

Q: Okay. And you came back in and then started operations again?

AST3 Nettles: I started operations again. I started pulling whoever we could or helping anybody else and doing whatever job we needed to do for the Coast Guard?

Q: Okay. And how long did your total period of solid working last? You had one 24-hour period and then you came back for another five days or a week?

AST3 Nettles: Probably another four to five days . . .

Q: Okay.

AST3 Nettles: . . . and they gave me another break.
Yes, it was on Sunday night or Monday morning that I found my wife. Once I found my wife was okay I was a lot better off. I was not happy. My frame of my mind changed completely when I found out there were people shooting in the general direction of my wife. I was not happy about that but I would still do my job and do it as best as I could.

Q: Now can you describe the planning that went into the missions that were coordinated out of the air station here?

AST3 Nettles: I really can’t say a whole lot. I know we were all designated to go to certain areas and just do what we could for assistance.

Q: So you had like sectors that you went into and basically you went and looked for people?

AST3 Nettles: Yes.

Q: And they would flag you down?

AST3 Nettles: Yes. That night when the crew picked us up they said, “Okay, we’ve been told to go to Violet, Louisiana so we’re going to go to Violet, Louisiana and look for people”, and we were busy, very busy. And those first two/three days, anywhere you went you were picking people off of roofs or you were helping people.

Q: Do you know how many hoists you participated in?

AST3 Nettles: No I do not. I have no idea how many people we picked up. I have no idea. The second or third day, it was the third day where we went to a hospital and we started picking up ICU patients off of submerged hospitals. I spent one day doing that all day long. I was on the roof for a good three to four hours in a wetsuit and when I got back to the Coast Guard I actually passed out from heat exhaustion because I had no water. I was stuck on that roof just trying to help people as much as I could.

Q: Did they have IVs here to replenish you?

AST3 Nettles: Yes.
I got chemical burns from being in the water and the . . . I came back from being in the water . . . actually I was chased off a roof by some not so friendly people that wanted to get picked up before the priorities did. I got in the water, swam in the water for about a hundred yards to an overpass where they picked me up and when I got back all my skin had turned bright red and it was like a real bad sunburn the next day. My skin peeled off; the top layer of skin. But that water was . . . .

Q: Did you get any medical treatment for that?

AST3 Nettles: This was the day after it hit. We had pretty much almost no water. We had no electricity. I got out of the helicopter and I’m sitting there just burning, I threw myself into a ditch with water and washed myself off as best as I could. A few minutes later I got to the hangar – that was to get most of what I had on – I got to the hangar and found a small hose that had some decent water and I crossed them underneath into a small ball and just had this little hose just dripping water on me trying to scrub myself off with water that way. So as I said, we had no fresh water and we had no electricity there.

Q: And what did you do with your wetsuit?

AST3 Nettles: I threw it away. The chemicals actually ate through my boots on my swimsuit and then I threw my other wetsuit away and I went and got another one and just used that.

Q: Well what did you do; have to get new wetsuits?

AST3 Nettles: I got new booties and a new wetsuit.

Q: Like every time you went out did you have new ones?

AST3 Nettles: Those were the only times really . . . .

Q: That you had to go into the water?

AST3 Nettles: Into the water.

Q: Yes.

AST3 Nettles: There were a few times where I got wet but it wasn’t really bad water. But just that one time I had to replace it because it was literally just eating through my material; the material that I had on.

Q: Now can you describe your training as far as what proved most useful to deal with this kind of situation? The Coast Guard doesn’t give you training in urban rescues but is there any training that you fell back on that helped you get through this ordeal?

AST3 Nettles: The number one specific thing that I thought was most beneficial as a rescue swimmer and the training that I received is when you go through Rescue Swimmer they teach you certain ways that work; certain ways that work the best way. But the most important thing is, is they teach you to think under a stressful environment and a stressful situation; to not panic, to not allow your emotions to take over, to be in the middle of who knows what, holding people, saving people’s lives and to be able to think logically. That is the best thing that could have ever happened to me is going through Rescue Swimmer School, not because of what they did to me physically or that they got me in such good shape or the rescue techniques, it’s because they taught me to think under stress. And that right there is what saved all of those lives, not just for me but for every rescue swimmer there. We were taught to think. We’ve never dealt with crash axes. We’ve never dealt with busting through roofs. We’ve never dealt with pulling people out of windows on the side of buildings. We’ve never dealt with any of that. But because of the training that we received we were taught to think and look at and do the best things that we could for those rescues; how to save those lives.

Q: Now did you participate in any nighttime operations?

AST3 Nettles: Yes.

Q: How was that?

AST3 Nettles: Scary. Doing these rescues at night was scary because you’re hovering above houses. You can’t see anything. You don’t know where power lines are. You don’t know where other helicopters are. You are going down into a dark house so you don’t know how many people are down there. It’s very disconcerting because you’re looking over a very large city and you see nothing but black, and occasionally you’d see a house on fire and that didn’t help you out at all. You’re going down in complete and total darkness and it was very disconcerting to do rescues there at night.

Q: Did you have like a big spotlight that you would shine on top of the roofs to try to spot people?

AST3 Nettles: We’d have spotlights and we’d go up and down streets just looking on roofs and looking around houses and looking anywhere.

Q: What was your altitude as you were doing these?

AST3 Nettles: Our altitude would change with the area that we were in. So there were some areas that had towers, large buildings, so we’d be higher. There were some areas that were rural that had no towers, just small trees, so then we stayed lower. So it didn’t matter where we would be. Usually I think we’d stay around 500 feet.

Q: Okay.
And can you discuss some of the risks involved? I mean you mentioned the night ops, but in general, some other things that were very risky for you as a rescue swimmer?

AST3 Nettles: I think the most dangerous thing for us were the panicky people. When people’s lives are on the line they have a tendency of not to think as proper as they should and that’s understandable. If you’re stressed out you don’t think. People don’t realize how they’re acting when they’re panicked. They become violent. They become confused, disoriented, and most of all scared. And when you’re scared and when you’re panicked, when you’re frightened, when you’re angry, it doesn’t matter, all of those things, you do things that are not normally what you do. People would become violent with us. People would do things that wouldn’t make any sense. And the dangerous thing was dealing with these people because you really did not know what they were going to do.

Q: Were you in fear of your safety?

AST3 Nettles: Yes.

Q: And you were not armed, correct?

AST3 Nettles: No, I was not armed.

Q: Did they have anybody in the helo crews that were armed or absolutely no one?

AST3 Nettles: No one was armed.

Q: Okay.
You described some of the risks. What are some of the challenges or is that just all one ball of wax, you know risks and challenges; how do you define the difference?

AST3 Nettles: Risks and challenges: well first of all, no search and rescue case is like another. There’s always something different; a different type of boat, different type of people, different types of environments. Every building was different that we went to. Every person that we picked up from buildings was different. So there’s risk to everything that you did. When you’re being hoisted in the helicopter to and from anything there’s a risk. So you’d look at these and you just find out, “Okay, well there’s a risk of that and there’s a risk of that. We can take care of those, that is no problem. We’re okay with this.” There were some risks of trying to hoist in the middle of a very small buildings surrounded by large buildings, that’s a bigger risk. We would just find things that we knew that we could do. And if there was a situation where we couldn’t do it we would find a better way to do it so that the risks were taken out; that we were as safe as we could be so we could save people’s lives.

Q: Now where did you take the evacuees once you picked them up?

AST3 Nettles: Several places. The evacuees were taken to; we dropped them off at the Superdome. We dropped them off at evacuation points on the I-10 in Metairie, just about anywhere. One of the major places for East New Orleans; we were dropping them off at the airport near East New Orleans and larger helicopters would mass transit them to the actual New Orleans Airport and take them off there.

Q: Now what was life like around the air station here; what was the mood or was it just go, go, go and nobody really thought about anything except for the mission they were doing?

AST3 Nettles: There were people that were go, go, go and they are the people that took care of flight operations and the search and rescue; things that needed to get done for us to do our job; go, go, go. But everybody forgets that there was somebody here finding food for us. There was somebody here making beds for us. There was somebody here calling people up and getting tents, finding places, starting a barbecue pit and cooking food for us. It was wonderful to get off a helicopter where you’ve been saving lives, to walk away to get changed, to turn around a corner and to find a barbecue pit cooking hot dogs and hamburgers for you, and you’re dead tired and the last thing you want to worry about is having to go and find something to eat. There were people that were on the go, go, go. There were people that were like, “Okay, we need to take care of these people that are on the go, go, go”, and it was wonderful.

Q: Now can you recount for us a memorable or the most memorable rescue? I mean there are so many stories but is there something that stands out in your mind?

AST3 Nettles: I had a lot of hard rescues. There were ones that were physically demanding. There were ones that were emotionally and mentally demanding. The hardest thing that hit me, the only time I broke down when I was out there was I was picking the ICU patients off of a hospital and there was a preacher – I’m not sure if he was a preacher or a reverend or a priest. I think he was a priest – and I’m standing on the roof and I’m putting these ICU patients; two people because they had to stay lying down, into the helicopter and the helicopter would take off. And this priest came out – a larger man, very nice African American, very nice man – and he comes up to me and he puts his arm around me and he goes, “What’s your name son?” I looked and I said, “I’m Noodles.” He goes, “Well Noodles is good. Noodles is a good name. What’s your real name?” And all my life I’ve been named David. My parents call me David and I don’t know why I told him this but I told him my name was David. I don’t tell people in the Coast Guard or people that I work with that my name is David. He goes, “David, let’s pray”. So he takes one arm, he has that one arm around me and he takes the other hand and holds my other shoulder, and I bowed my head and he bowed his head. And I’m sitting here thinking to myself, “This is going to be good. We’re going to pray for New Orleans. We’re going to pray for the people to make it all right and we’re going to bless the people, and we’re going to ask God to help the city.” And he starts praying and he says, “Lord, help David. Help David and help the Coast Guard have strength.” And as soon as he started saying this stuff I started crying. I couldn’t believe with all these people that needed help he’s asking God to help me. And I just stood there and cried and I hugged him and I told him, “Thank you.” It was just so amazing that this man was, of all the people he was asking to help or needing help, and it was me, and it was moving. And right there just a lot of it hit me and I just cried for a little bit and I just stayed with him for a second. So that was one of the most moving experiences I had here at Katrina.

Q: Now as far as lessons learned, do you have any kind of suggestions for . . . I mean you were in an area that gets hit by these hurricanes and severe weather. Is there anything that comes to mind that could be done better or you could evolve to making things a little bit easier when you have to respond to something like this again?

AST3 Nettles: I think all hospitals need to have generators on the third floor or higher. I think people need to heed warnings. If there’s a hurricane, leave. If there’s a storm, leave. If there’s anything threatening, leave. There’s nothing wrong with just getting on a bus and leaving for a day while that storm hits.
A lesson for a rescue swimmer: always expect the unexpected because you never know what kind of a situation you’re going to be dealing with. They train and prepare us for anything that you can ever imagine and for things that you couldn’t imagine.

Q: Do you think any training in urban rescues would help you a bit more or [chuckle] . . . ?

AST3 Nettles: I think learning how to use an axe would probably be beneficial?

Q: Well you know they do have organizations that specialize in urban rescues. Is that something that would be beneficial for the Coast Guard to participate in or is it the flexibility of the Coast Guard that enables it, as a first responder, to already know pretty much what they need to do?

AST3 Nettles: It’s the flexibility of the Coast Guard. When we got there we knew what to do. We’d look at it. It wasn’t standard operations for us but we knew what to do and we knew how to do it because of the fact that we were so flexible; because of the fact that we were trained to look outside the box and to do rescues outside the box if it’s necessary, and we did that. We got there. We were saving lives during the storm. When the storm was still here we were down south saving lives. When we get up here we’re like, “Alright, this is it. This is not what we usually do but you know what, we’re going to do it anyway so we’re going to do the best that we can”, and we did and we saved lives; 6,400 people. I thought we did damn good.

Q: Now is there anything you’d care to share with us that we haven’t covered?

AST3 Nettles: I love my job.

Q: Very good.
All right thank you very much. Good job!

AST3 Nettles: Sorry about the crying thing.

Q: No, we want the real story.

END OF INTERVIEW