Coast Guard aircraft work westward. Hoisting increases dramatically north and west of the Superdome. This low-income area of projects and tenement houses had been dry the first few days after Katrina. It was now flooded, and large groups of survivors were now waving for assistance.
Coast Guard members delivered food and water to several apartment houses with 200+ people, and evacuated those needing immediate care first. When needed, crews called for heavy-lift aircraft to conduct mass evacuations.
The response was moving from initial search and rescue (SAR) to SAR/Recovery.
“Once you’ve picked up everyone who’s waving a rag on a rooftop, now you’ve got to more systematically go back and identify who still needs to be picked up,” explained CAPT Bruce Jones.
He told Lt. Gen. Honore, who initially oversaw the entire federal response, that they needed to gather 2,000 small boats, along with hundreds of troops and trucks, and do a door-to-door sweep of the city. Including attics, to be sure nobody was trapped up there. “If there’s somebody in there you need to be able to pop a smoke and call in a helicopter; National Guard or Coast Guard helicopter, to rescue those people.”
For this next phase, federal agencies launched a unified SAR task force, and set up a grid system which then the Army and the Marines executed.
Miracles still happened
Most experts believed that any people still trapped and helpless in their homes would not have survived past Sept. 1.
That said, miracles still happened.
On Tuesday, Sept. 6, a rescue team made up of Coast Guard MSST, TACLET, and PSU personnel found and rescued a 70-year-old man trapped in an attic in East New Orleans. Another team saved three puppies in lower St. Bernard.
Delivering Rescuees to safety
Events of Biblical proportion
By the second week after Katrina, the SAR operations were virtually concluded. Anyone who wanted to be rescued was safely out of harm’s way. The Coast Guard then shifted to the myriad of problems posed by the destruction left by the hurricane.
By the end of evacuation operations, the Coast Guard had saved 33,375 lives.
These intrepid rescuers successfully accomplished under the most trying of circumstances – including a lack of power, fresh water, food, medical supplies; resistance from some local law enforcement officials; and the constant threat by armed and dangerous gangs roaming the streets.
Over 5,000 Coast Guardsmen – including 500 who had just lost their own home – served in the Katrina relief operations. They set service records that may not be surpassed in our lifetime.
They addressed 10 major simultaneous oil spills, picked up 1+ million hazardous materials containers, salvaged 2,000 wrecked vessels, and restored 800 aids to navigation.
Air Rescues: A total of 12,535 flood victims were saved by Coast Guard helicopters after Katrina came ashore. It was the greatest aerial search and rescue mission ever conducted by the service.
Boat rescues: 21,200 people were rescued by Coast Guard boat forces. It was the greatest boat evacuation mission ever conducted by the service.
Here are just a few other examples of their accomplishments:
- Aircraft served from every Coast Guard air station.
- AIRSTA Houston aircraft flew more than 164 flight hours and 106 sorties, saving 691 lives.
- ATC Mobile saved 4,812 people and assisted thousands more by delivering over 80 tons of food and water supplies to critical areas. ATC Mobile became the largest air station in the history of the Coast Guard, operating over 43 aircraft, flying 1,193 sorties and 2,202 flight hours.
- AIRSTA Clearwater saved 1,165 lives and assisted 49 others. They also deployed 708,000 pounds in 236 “sling loads,” dumping sandbags on the breached levees and transported 100 buoys from D-9 to Sector Mobile.
- At the peak of the response, the Coast Guard was rescuing 750 people an hour by boat and 100 people an hour by air.
- Coast Guardsmen evacuated 9,409 more from 11 hospitals.
- Air crews flew a total of 4,945 sorties with a flight time of 4,291 hours.
“No one’s ever been through something of this magnitude before,” said Capt. Paskewich.
“I am just absolutely floored and awed by just how incredibly well our folks performed. It’s magnificent how we can train our folks and empower them to go do a job and for them to have the confidence to carry it out and remain safe and know their bounds, and do what needs to be done. That to me is so awe-inspiring and I think that says a lot for our organization. And the fact that on all fronts, not just search and rescue, but every other mission, that we can handle things simultaneously. You can basically take a unit, move it out of the city, destroy the whole city, destroy its stations and confront us with events of biblical proportions – and we still come through with shining colors, I think is a real testament to the strength of our organization.”
– Capt. Frank Paskewich
Although the rescue and restoration efforts were highly successful and there were no aircraft crashes or serious casualties amongst the Coast Guard, there was a serious cost. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina took over 1,800 civilian lives and caused upwards of $100 billion in damage. That damage extended to the Coast Guard.
A total of 582 Coast Guardsmen lost their homes during Katrina and another 69 lost theirs during Rita. Station Gulfport was completely destroyed while stations Grande Isle, New Orleans, Dauphin Island, Pascagoula, Venice, as well as sectors Mobile and New Orleans, AIRSTA New Orleans, ATC Mobile and ISC New Orleans all sustained damage.
When the Algiers Point ferry was no longer needed, the boat crews started to break up. Their next job would be to restore the region’s aids to navigation. Their leader, Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Robert D. Lewald, called his team together.
“Make sure you remember what you did and keep those mental pictures,” he told his crews, “because it will stay with you for your life, and it should.”
The women and men of the Coast Guard made sure the nation’s oldest sea-going service was a bright light on these darkest of days.
