Interview: CAPT David R. Callahan, USCG

Transcript

Q: Okay Captain, can you give us your first name, your last name, and spell your last name?

CAPT Callahan: Sure. It’s Captain David R. Callahan. That’s C-A-L-L-A-H-A-N.

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

CAPT Callahan: Twenty-three years now.

Q: Okay, and could you just give us a brief overview of your career path that you took in the Coast Guard?

CAPT Callahan: Well I started out as an Academy graduate in 1982 and from there I went to my obligatory tour on a ship; on the Coast Guard cutter Rush. I did a little over two years on the Rush and then went to Flight Training at Pensacola. From there I was assigned to Air Station New Orleans my first tour. Second tour was Group Port Angeles. I did a short stint with a NATO tour during the Bosnia conflict; on staff with NATO in Italy. I came back to Air Station Kodiak

and was the Chief of ALPAT: Alaska Patrol Section. After that I was assigned as the Operations Officer, or as the Branch Chief actually, back to Mobile again at that point in time; the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mobile, and I was the Branch Chief here for the H-65 Branch. After that I was assigned as the Operations Officer of Air Station Savannah. I fleeted up to the XO position in Savannah and then was selected to be the Commanding Officer of Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans and I did that for two years. After New Orleans I went to the Air War College for an assignment in Montgomery with the Air Force for a year and following that, just three years ago, was assigned as the Commanding Officer of the Aviation Training Center.

Q: Here in Mobile?

CAPT Callahan: Here in Mobile, yes.

Q: Okay.

Now what kind of preparations did the air station make for the eventual Katrina landfall?

CAPT Callahan: Well I think that the question is a good one because it’s kind of extraordinary how this place had to change from and morph from a training center into a full blown Coast Guard air station. Now we do that. That’s part of our Hurricane Plan is that when we go to Condition Two we chop to and become part of the 8th District and normally we report to Headquarters directly. But what happened was, as Katrina moved in and we went through our hurricane conditions and got closer and closer, we eventually did become part of the 8th Coast Guard District and those preparations were, in the prior 48 hours to hurricane arrival, purely to change this place from the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center into what ended up to be the

largest Coast Guard air station in the history of the Coast Guard. So we morphed very quickly as part of our plan but the preparations were primarily involved in getting our aircraft ready maintenance wise, getting our crews rested and positioned to go into action for the hurricane, and getting the base ready to withstand what ended up to be a CAT 4 storm. Of course it didn’t hit here directly but certainly damaged us.

Q: So what would you say was an important aspect of preparing for this; were you getting messages down the chain or you guys just took over this base and decided what was the proper procedure to execute?

CAPT Callahan: Well again, we had a plan that kind of sets us up for that. You know we go through a lot of hurricanes here. Every year we get at least two that influence this base and it seems like it’s been that way. And in fact we had a great dress rehearsal with a tropical storm and also with Hurricane Dennis that, when I say dress rehearsal, Dennis actually caused us some damage and we worked pretty hard during Dennis but it gave us a warm-up for this big event. So really what we did in preparation was really just start, you know once we chop and become an operational unit is just to start focusing on all those things that we as a training center know very well and have done in our past tours, but getting everybody in the right, getting their game face on essentially, and that’s what happened to us those 48 hours prior. We knew this hurricane was going to be huge. We knew that wherever it hit was going to devastate and we knew it was going to be close to home here. It could have been us actually. So we had a bunch of people at the Aviation Training Center just basically getting their game face on and you could see it. When you were here two or three days before the hurricane people were dead serious about what was going on. We had shut off all the training and turned into a bunch of operators, which I’m fortunate here to have some of the best pilots in the Coast Guard – they’re all instructors – so it was no problem for them and our crews too; no problem for anybody to put their game face on here. They knew what had to be done and they started doing it.

Q: Now as far as aircraft go, you receive more assets here? What is normally here and what did it swell to?

CAPT Callahan: Well we normally have seven H-65s and three H-60s and then four HU-25s assigned here so that’s a total of 14 aircraft that are assigned to ATC Mobile. So those are my resources I have available to me here from ATC. But what happened with Katrina was after the hurricane hit and people realized, even before the hurricane hit people realized how big this was going to be, Atlantic Area Command started channeling forces into ATC Mobile and staging them here and it became essentially a forward operating base for the entire Coast Guard in aviation is what happened. And at times here as the storm went on and as the post-response went on we had over 40 aircraft working out of here, which is unprecedented. So we very quickly became the forward operating base for the entire Coast Guard.

Q: Now as far as the personnel go, you had an increase in personnel also. How large did that get?

CAPT Callahan: It was extraordinary. The XO and I are still trying to figure out just how many people were on this base at the height of Katrina but we believe that we had over 1,500 Coast Guard personnel and a few other agency personnel on this base, and that is over five times what we normally see on this base really. And you could see it when you were here. I mean we basically opened the gates to all the TAD forces that came in and you couldn’t go into a space on this base without tripping over a cot or somebody’s little cubbyhole where they were sleeping. We had places like the “O” Club in the basement of the BEQ building set up as berthing areas. We had the racquet ball court set up as a berthing area. We basically just put people wherever we could get them to have a quiet place to sleep. The galley ran almost around the clock. For the first time in the history of this place we had a MIDRATS which I hadn’t done since I was on ships, but since we were running around the clock we had to feed people around the clock and those pieces are the untold stories about Katrina; about how Coasties essentially just knew what they had to do and they did it. They just said, “Hey, we have an operation going on here and we’ve got to feed people around the clock so we’re going to do it”, and didn’t have to go up to the Skipper for permission to do that, it just happened. And that was one of the extraordinary things that you noticed about all the people on this base. I had just sections of personnel that were taking care of business and doing what Coasties do best and that is adapt and overcome and handle what needs to be done.

Q: Now as far as the, I think it was the Operational Center or Comm Center, one was destroyed.

CAPT Callahan: Yes.

Q: Can you tell us about that?

CAPT Callahan: We lost all of our operational spaces here in the storm and we had all of our aircraft flown away with crews and prepositioned for the storm, and when the storm hit here those who stayed onboard – and we had a substantial number of people who stayed onboard -knowing we were going to have to operate immediately after the storm, those folks were up in the BEQ building, which is our shelter and it can withstand up to a CAT 3 or CAT 4 storm. The rest of the base was shut down and we watched from the BEQ through our CAT 3 windows up there, watched our hangar almost fall apart on us. I remember standing there looking at the 120 mile an hour gusts that were occurring and watching pieces of hangar come off and telling my XO, “XO, here it goes. It’s going.” And as I looked out the window I saw the hanger lean-too roof actually lift up like a hatch and slam back down and I thought it was just a matter of moments before that was going to take away the rest of the hangar. It turned out it didn’t but in the process of taking that damage we lost every bit of our operation spaces. Our operations center and communications center were destroyed. So starting out the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States deaf, blind and unable to talk to anybody was one heck of a way to begin.

Q: Now what other obstacles did you face; like for instance an increased maintenance of aircraft, was that a problem?

CAPT Callahan: Well it was not a problem because, again, I had folks from all over the Coast Guard that showed up here and knew what to do. They assembled into teams. And I’ve got to say that this, to me, if I may, this to me was a validation of everything that was good about the Coast Guard. And I’m not just talking about aviation but I’ll use aviation as an example; our standardization programs in the operations side of things, our standardization and training programs in the maintenance side of things; all of those good things came together during Katrina here at ATC Mobile and carried us through. We had maintenance personnel from every Coast Guard aviation unit come into ATC Mobile and I mean every one was represented. We counted and looked and we had every air station here. They all came together on our hangar

deck, formed teams and took care of maintenance for over 40 aircraft for seven days around the clock, which again, I can’t overemphasize this. It was extraordinary. It was unprecedented that that many aircraft and people would assemble in one place. It was unprecedented in the history of the Coast Guard. They assembled in teams and they organized. It didn’t take any COs or XOs to figure that out for them. They knew what to do and they did it. And it was an event that I’ll always remember because you had chief petty officers doing what you always hoped and wanted chiefs to do and they were leading people and they were out there in the trenches taking care of business, forming the right teams and making things work. And I told some folks afterwards, the best way to describe it from my perspective as the CO is that it was a thing of beauty, it really was, to see those folks come together and organize and perform in the way they did. So there were no problems. It was just people doing what they knew was the right thing to do and being leaders and organizing, and they put planes out on the line around the clock for seven days, over 40 aircraft.

Q: Now from what I understand, isn’t there a ratio for like per every flight hour you need “X” amount of maintenance?

CAPT Callahan: Yes.

Q: Can you explain that?

CAPT Callahan: Well I can’t give you the exact numbers on that but those numbers, it depends on the amount of people you have to throw into the equation. All I can tell you is that planes came back in this around the clock operation and were immediately swarmed by crews of ten or fifteen folks. They’d pull them off to the side, do the post-flights and the through-flights, take care of the discreps and push them back out on the line and get another fresh crew to put into them, and that’s kind of the way it worked for seven days. It was just folks were waiting for the planes to return here. They had a crew ready to go and they had the maintenance teams ready to go and they jumped on it and got it done. We’re still actually putting the pieces back together to try to figure out exactly how many people we had in what teams here, but it was, again, I think the fact that people were motivated in waiting for these planes to return and these teams actually made things work very well. Again, it appeared to me to be a very smooth operation the way they had it organized on the hangar deck; folks coming back out of the New Orleans and Mississippi areas. And planes had discrepancies on them and they fixed them very quickly. That’s the bottom line.

Q: Do you happen to know how many missions were run out of this station?

CAPT Callahan: Well we know how many aircraft that were dispatched and we know how many people we saved and we’re still counting numbers on the missions, but the sorties were, again, our aircraft were just around the clock. We just slapped new crews in the planes and sent them back out so I can’t give you those numbers right now. We know that at this unit over 4,800 were hoisted by aircraft that were dispatched out of ATC Mobile. And the interesting thing about Mobile in our operation here was that we were feeding aircraft into the New Orleans area but the untold story is the aircraft that responded to the Mississippi coastline those first 36 hours. And the devastation was as bad as New Orleans in the Mississippi coastal areas and nobody could get to them but us really at ATC Mobile. We were in the right position to get to them. In that first night and following day over half of our aircraft we sent out of here went to Mississippi and did rescues there and there were hundreds hoisted in the Mississippi coastal areas too. So it was kind of a dual-pronged approach for us. We sent aircraft out, some of them short-stopped in Mississippi on their way to New Orleans to do rescues, so we had two areas where we were really emphasizing. Of course the aircraft we would send to New Orleans would end up receiving further tasking from the New Orleans Air Station and folks over there but they came out of here with their initial tasking and we’d see them come back six or eight hours, turn them around, put another crew in and send them back over. So that’s kind of how the operation worked for the first seven days.

Q: Were you able to do any overflights yourself at this point?

CAPT Callahan: I did. I flew over the Mississippi area twice and worked the Mississippi coastline. There was no way that I was going to throw myself into the New Orleans area. It would take me too far away from here and this operation was far too large for the Skipper to stray away too far. But I did fly over the Mississippi areas in H-65s and did fly in a 60 over the New Orleans area myself too.

Q: Were you participating in any kind of rescue operations or was it an overflight?

CAPT Callahan: No, mine was an overflight. I did not do any rescue operations as the CO here. We had plenty of young pilots that were ready to go so that was not my job and I didn’t view my job as that with a base this large and an operation going on this big. However, I did feel it was necessary that myself and the Sector Commander went out and did an overflight over the Mississippi area just to do some assessments on damage, and it was important for me to do that, I think, just to see for myself what kind of devastation occurred over there. That’s when I got on the flight; a lot of devastation for sure.

Q: Well what did you come away with; any new ideas in dealing with really a unique situation like this hurricane?

CAPT Callahan: Well you know it’s funny. As I said before, I think this is an affirmation of everything we’ve been doing; an affirmation of all the right things that we in the Coast Guard aviation have been doing and I think when you walk away from this we’re still doing the wash-up on it trying to figure out, you know, first of all you’re stepping away from it going, “What happened?” But the affirmation was that all the things that we have emphasized for years and years, you know, standardization amongst our crews, recurrent training for search and rescue, maintenance organization; all those concepts and all those things that we’ve been working for years, we knew we were doing for a reason and Katrina was the reason. It gets us through day to day in the Coast Guard but when you apply those types of things, that standardization, those principles, to a large operation like Katrina it pays off and you can see it, not only on the surface side of the Coast Guard but in aviation especially when you had, for instance, crews coming out of here that had an aircraft commander from Miami, a co-pilot from Savannah, a rescue swimmer from Mobile and a flight mech from up in Atlantic City. So I mean you had crews that were mixed and I had guys come back and tell me that, “I didn’t know these guys before the flight but afterwards we were doing high fives and we felt like we were stationed together”, and that shows you the kind of benefits you gain from standardization. And I know on the surface side they have similar stories. But I think if you walk away from anything you walk away with, again, the affirmation and the reinforcement that, “Hey, standardization and training work”, and that’s the most important thing and that’s what pulls you through when it gets crazy. And it did get crazy during Katrina. I know that my compatriots over in New Orleans and Houston will tell you the same thing. Those air stations saw activity at the level we did here and of course the crews we sent over worked for them but they’ll validate that too.

Q: Now I noticed in the mess hall you have a big thank you sign. Is that part of . . . ?

CAPT Callahan: We received thank you’s from every corner of the United States. It’s amazing. We’re getting letters from children, from schools. The signs I think you saw were probably from schools; school children. We had Brownie and Girl Scout troops show up just to ask to come onboard to walk around the hangar deck and hand out cookies just so they could thank us. There are several . . . I’ve gotten personal letters, which to me are very flattering, but letters that really belong to the crew, but personal letters from people all over the United States saying, “Hey, thank you for what you did. It was extraordinary”, and that kind of thing. So I mean we know we’re loved out there and it’s great. It helps motivate the crew. I think that those are the kinds of things you’ll continue to see for a while here and it was such a high visibility event that a lot of people saw us in action and I think that’s heart-warming to us that the people think that.

Q: Now I know that you had several VIPs come in here. Could you talk about what went on with that?

CAPT Callahan: Yes, we had VIPs right in the middle of the operation. I think the third day we had the VIP show up; the President of the United States made a visit here and the visit, part of it was really designed to be what they call an “Off the Record Visit” meaning the President was going to come in. He needed a place to come in and meet with three governors; the governors of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. It turned out that he just met with Mississippi and Alabama. And then a number of senators came in with him. But that was an extraordinary visit for us; for the Coast Guard I think. We were told to keep it under hat until about [chuckle] 24 hours prior and I was told by the White House not even to notify my chain of command until 24 hours prior, so I complied with the boss and then was able to call and notify them. But the President came in on Air Force One right to our ramp and pre-staged his helicopters out of here. The briefing went out televised live to the nation unbeknownst to us. It turned out that it was supposed to be a FEMA-led briefing with myself and Jim Beostead who’s the Sector Commander kind of standing in the wings and available for questions by the President. Well it turned out about a half hour to 45 minutes prior that the plan changed and the FEMA Director; Director Brown, actually told me that he was going to hand the briefing over to me to brief the President on some Coast Guard actions, and that was quite a surprise 45 minutes prior to the briefing. It didn’t matter. I was on three hours of sleep so it didn’t scare me. I was just too tired to [chuckle] actually react to it. But I shared the briefing with Jim Beostead, the Sector Commander, and we ended up briefing the President unbeknownst to us live across the nation on television and I’m told it turned out okay [chuckle].

Following the briefing we were allowed to line up 45 Coast Guardsmen and those Coast Guardsmen came from all the units around here. We had some from ATC Mobile, some from some of the air stations, the Gulf Strike Team, Sector New Orleans. They all lined up on the hangar deck and I was allowed to escort the President and to meet all of them, and he went down the line and met every Coast Guardsmen, shook their hand and then saluted them and exchanged personal comments with them, and it was quite extraordinary. And the President, throughout the visit here as I escorted him around as the Base Commander, was consistently full of praise for the Coast Guard. It was very, very touching to hear him give those personal comments about the Coast Guard’s actions in Katrina.

And I need to share a couple of stories that happened with the President if you don’t mind. These are important.

Q: Yes, absolutely.

CAPT Callahan: I met him at Air Force One and as I walked him across the ramp the first thing he asked me was, he goes, “Captain Callahan, do you know anything about aerial firefighting? Do you have any capability here”, and I said, “Well no Sir, that’s not a Coast Guard mission. We don’t have that capability.” But I told him, “I know who does. The Mississippi Air National Guard has CH-47s with buckets operating fires right now in Mississippi”, because I’d seen them the day before when I was flying, and he goes, “Fine Captain.” And he calls over one of his aides and tells me to tell his aide what I just told the President and then he basically told the aide to go take care of it. So that was something that people asked me as I was walking across the ramp with the President, why he was talking to me and doing this and pointing fingers and grabbing aides, and that was what happened when that occurred. So that was the first thing.

But we walked into the hangar and stepped into a side room – it was kind of an anti-room – waiting to go out to the brief and it was just myself as the military escort, the President and his FEMA director, and he spoke with the FEMA director for a short time and then as we were getting ready to head out Governor Barber walked in; Haley Barbour from Mississippi walked in and he and the President were good friends obviously and exchanged some personal comments, and it was a pretty emotional moment. But then Governor Barber said – and this is why I’m telling you this is that before he and the President really exchanged any conversation – said, “Mr. President, you have to thank the Coast Guard for what they’ve done for the people of Mississippi.” And he said, “The Coast Guard was one of the only people out there in the first day of the storm saving my Mississippians and you have to thank them”, and the President said, “I understand and I will thank them and I’ve seen them in action and appreciate it”, and those kinds of things. So then Senator Lott walked into the room and he was not expected but he walked in and without being part of that conversation said exactly the same thing. He said, “Mr. President, you have to thank the Coast Guard today for their outstanding efforts in this storm. They’ve saved thousands of lives.” And he went on and the President nodded and said, “Yes, I know and we thanked them.” So I was able to witness a little bit of personal conversation between the President and some politicians. But again, that was kind of the theme of the whole visit was just that he was thanking the Coast Guard. We went out and did the briefing after that but one of the more proud moments in my Coast Guard career was when the President and I walked out. Normally the President walks out to the briefings alone. You see him walk out to the briefing unescorted usually and I was a little confused as to what I needed to do. I told him, “Mr. President, I’m going to walk out ahead of you if you don’t mind.” I was kind of briefed ahead of time that what I was supposed to do is walk out ahead of him and get in position when he walked out. And when I asked him that I said, “Mr. President, would you like me to walk out ahead of you”, and he goes, “No Captain, I want you to walk me in”, and I took that as an honor. I mean honestly, he allowed me to walk with him into the briefing and it was just one of those small things that you see on TV but to me it was a great honor.

In any event, a couple other small vignettes I need to say here that happened because they need to go into history here. The President had called three rescue swimmers here a couple days prior to his visit to thank them for their efforts. They were from Elizabeth City, Cape Cod and one of our swimmers here. And he called them right up in the BEQ and woke them up and said, “Thank you for what you’ve done”, and it was one of those personal phone calls. One of the guy’s names was Petty Officer Mitcheltree. And so they made their calls and a couple days had passed and the President visited here, and as the President and I were getting ready to walk out of the hangar he goes, “Captain, where’s Petty Officer Mitcheltree?” I was kind of taken aback and I’m going, “Why would he know about Mitcheltree”, and then it came to me and I said, “Oh yes, that’s right, he called him a couple days prior.” And so I said, “Well Mr. President, Petty Officer Mitcheltree is in the shop right now. He wasn’t able to come out here on the hangar because we figured we’d spread the wealth a little bit and he talked to you on the phone, and so we picked some other swimmers to stand out here”, and he goes, “Captain, I want to see Petty Officer Mitcheltree right now” [chuckle]. And the President kind of said it in a joking voice but I knew he was playing a little bit, but he wanted to see Petty Officer Mitcheltree. So of course I waved to a chief and the chief ran over and ran to the shop and you could see poor Petty Officer Mitcheltree getting pushed out onto the hangar deck by his neck [chuckle] and not knowing exactly what’s going on. And the chief grabbed him and ran him over to the President and the President said, “Ah, Petty Officer Mitcheltree”, and met him and hugged him and shook his hand and said it was glad to finally see a face instead of talking to him on the phone. And they took a picture together and that was the kind of the personal contact the President had made. But he remembered who Petty Officer Mitcheltree was. Of course it’s an unusual name but he remembered that he had spoken to him on the phone and called him out there, and Petty Officer Mitcheltree got a big surprise.

But again, the Presidential visit was a great honor. It was a whirlwind visit for us and for another purpose; he wanted a briefing from FEMA and to meet the governors, but we certainly got our share of contact with the President and he had his share of contact with Coast Guardsmen and women and it was a great day for us here, although it was a busy day. The minute he left it was pretty much back to, “Where’s our aircraft? What’s going on?” Because we had sent up a wave of aircraft out right before he visited here and it was one of those things where we didn’t show what was going on and even as he was here speaking. So that’s my day with the President [chuckle].

Q: Well we had talked earlier with Chief Jenson who apparently, personally was affected by the hurricane. He had damage to his home.

CAPT Callahan: He did.

Q: Do you have other personnel here that had the same . . . ?

CAPT Callahan: We were very lucky here if you compare us to other places like New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast Guardsmen and women. We had about five people that had, what I would consider, serious or total damage to their homes here at ATC Mobile. And again, Chief Jenson was probably one of the cases that was worse than others but it was only five and compared to numbers like 70 percent of folks who were assigned to New Orleans loosing their homes or having serious damage, I mean we were grateful. And we’ve done our level best to take care of those folks who were affected by the storm. But Chief Jenson, to me, is a heroic story because he was really the chief in charge of running the whole BEQ/BOQ galley situation here and I think the Chief knew early on in this whole thing that he had lost his home. I mean he was down on the Dog River and knew that his home had taken some serious damage and yet he wouldn’t leave the place to go do anything except . . . he wouldn’t go look at his house. He spent time here and just refused to leave. And he knew that the job had to be done and he kept doing it and that story was repeated in a lot of places in the Coast Guard. Coasties knew that they lost their homes and yet they knew what their duty was and they just went on with their duty and did great things.

Q: Alright.

Now is there anything that we haven’t covered here that you’d like to include?

CAPT Callahan: Well there are a couple things. You know one of the things that we did learn, you know we talked a little bit about the lessons learned coming right from Katrina in standardization and training and all that, but another one is adaptability, and I don’t know if anybody told the story about the use of axes and saws.

Q: Yes, we did speak about that. We talked about the flexibility of the Coast Guard being able to make decisions on-scene.

CAPT Callahan: Yes, and I may be repeating a story that’s already been told here but it’s a good example of adaptability that I know only the Coast Guard; an organization like the Coast Guard can perform. You know we found out the first night out there that people were being trapped in their attics and we had no way to get into those attics. So we had crews out there who adapted on-scene by borrowing fire axes from fire trucks and by using crash axes to cut through rooftops from the aircraft. And the extraordinary thing about it was that we realized coming back that night that, “Hey, we’re in a new ballgame here. We’re going to have to change our tactics”, and we did. And I’m not sure who it was, I think it was the XO, ordered folks to go out to Home Depot and that night we bought every wood ax and Saws All; battery powered Saws All we could find and started outfitting our rescue swimmers with those to adapt to this new urban rescue environment that we were in. So I may go to jail for buying all those axes and saws [chuckle] but I don’t think so. But it was one of those things that we just said, “Hey, we’ve got to do it. We need this stuff. We’re going to go get it”, and we had people onboard who knew how to handle it and took care of it. It’s just another example of flexibility and adaptability that I think is key to the Coast Guard being so successful in these events.

Q: Now how did that communication chain work from the operational people up to you to make these decisions?

CAPT Callahan: Well I didn’t make the decision. You know to be honest with you, that’s an example. I mean it was one of those things . . . I knew that I was infoed on it but, you know, there was a master chief working the swimmers here. There was the XO. I had plenty of people and I entrusted them to handle it. And the XO came up to me and said, “Hey, by the way, we bought a bunch of saws and axes to get the swimmers out there with the right equipment”, and I said, “Right answer, good job. You don’t need to ask me for permission to do that”, and that’s exactly how it went. There really wasn’t a flow of information. Guys just took care of it. They knew it was the right thing to do. My XO, I trust him. I trusted the chiefs in charge of the swimmers and I trusted that when they bought that equipment that they were going to make sure that each person knew how to use it correctly and they would come up with the right tactics and techniques to use it. And you know it happened on the spot. So that’s the thing; you’ve got to trust your people to do the right thing and we’ve got people in the Coast Guard that we know are going to do the right thing. It was absolutely . . . you know as the CO here that was one of the things; folks asked me about all the decisions I’ve made during Katrina, and quite frankly I don’t remember a lot of the decisions I made because people were doing the right thing and making the right decisions and doing the right things at lower levels, and I got to stand there and nod my head and put my thumb up and approve a lot of things and kind of be the safety observer for the whole thing; be the Skipper. And everything didn’t flow up to me. It didn’t need to and that’s one of the good things about how we operate in the Coast Guard. Our culture is one of first response, and that culture, we empower our coxswains and our aircraft commanders to go out there and make decisions on-scene and we empower our chief petty officers, at least I do at this unit, to make those kinds of decisions at the lower levels, especially during a crisis like Katrina and that’s exactly what happened. That culture that we have; that culture of first response, actually paid off I think. We had people making the right decisions on-scene, making the adjustments and being flexible and adaptable and I think that’s exactly what we should be doing, and that’s why we are valuable in the first response arena in these kinds of storms and these kinds of events.

Q: Alright.

Well thank you very much Captain, very good.

CAPT Callahan: Good.

END OF INTERVIEW