Diary of a superstorm

Wednesday, Aug. 24

• Tropical Depression Katrina is first detected 175 miles southeast of the Bahamas

• It strengthens into Tropical Storm Katrina as it moves toward the Florida coast.

• The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane watch, and then upgrades to a hurricane warning just before midnight.

Louisiana’s Gulf Coast region is home to some of the busiest Coast Guard units, all led by Sector New Orleans. The Coast Guard’s entire Heartland District is also based out of New Orleans.

All of these teams’ daily operations came to a sudden halt, as leaders activated their evacuation plans and uniformed members figured out the safest places for their families to ride out the storm.

BM2 Ronald Mancuso, for example, was ordered to motor one of Station Grand Isle’s two small boats up the Mississippi to Baton Rouge.

Thursday, Aug. 25

• Hurricane Katrina makes landfall on Keating Beach, south of Fort Lauderdale, around 6 a.m.

• The eye actually passes directly over the National Hurricane Center, which reports a wind gust of 87 mph.

With Katrina set to make initial landfall in Florida, the Coast Guard’s Southeast District (then known as District 7) activated its Incident Management Team (IMT) and sent liaison officers to county Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) to help coordinate relief efforts. This is a tried-and-true approach for coordinating with local, state, federal and tribal authorities during a disaster response, and proved its value once again during Katrina.

Weather conditions deteriorated throughout the day. District Southeast responded to three vessels in distress, hoisting 9 people to safety – the first rescue of thousands to follow in the coming days.

Friday, Aug. 26

• Hurricane Katrina is now a Category 2 hurricane.

• The National Hurricane Center shifts the storm’s possible track from the Florida Panhandle to the Mississippi/Alabama Coast.

• Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco declares a state of emergency, which activates the state’s emergency response and recovery program.

As Katrina made its way into the Gulf of Mexico, Air Station Clearwater began a search and rescue (SAR) operation that would last 27 hours. At 7 a.m., the air station received a report of an activated Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) from the fishing vessel Mary Lynn. There were three people on board the sinking vessel, located 85 miles west of Key West, Florida, very near the eye of Katrina.

The station dispatched a HH-60 Jayhawk under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Craig Massello. The hurricane-force winds made the 210-mile trip take longer than anticipated, and the helo was forced to refuel at Key West. When Massello finally located the Mary Lynn, he lowered his rescue swimmer, AST3 Kenyon Bolton, into the water off the vessel’s stern. The waves were 40 feet high. During a harrowing 30 minute rescue that included a brush with a shark, Bolton got the three crewmen safely on board the helicopter. They touched down at Clearwater at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning.

About 300 miles away, while Massello was fighting Katrina’s winds, Sector New Orleans was having a party. Coast Guard members were celebrating the service’s newest command, created from merging three smaller commands. The new sector’s commanding officer, Capt. Frank Paskewich, hoped the morale event would give everyone a chance to relax and mingle.

Paskewich implemented the Sector’s Continuity of Operations Plan, which involved relocating everybody to Alexandria, La.

Around that same time, Rear Adm. Robert Duncan was facing similar decisions. He ordered his people and assets to evacuate up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, while he would stay “forward-deployed” rather than going with the crews.

“I wanted to replicate ‘Apocalypse Now’ with Coast Guard helicopters,” Duncan said. “Remember that movie with all those Hueys coming in all at once? I wanted to darken the sky with orange helicopters.”

Duncan contacted the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to inform them of the Coast Guard’s capabilities and his plans for handling the response.

The most important part of the pre-hurricane planning was to ensure that Coast Guard units survived the hurricane’s impact and be instantly ready to conduct relief and rescue operations. Aircraft went to Air Station Houston and other airports out of harm’s way but close enough so they could follow the hurricane closely as it moved inland. Boats were moved up the Mississippi River to safe anchorages while personnel made sure family members were evacuated.

CAPT Robert “Bob” Mueller, the Deputy Sector New Orleans Commander, noted that “we had units scattered all over Southern Louisiana … because we were afraid if we had one safe haven or two safe havens and they got hit, they could be damaged beyond repair or we’d lose our resources.”

One of those critical resources was Aviation Survival Technician Lawrence Nettles, called “Noodles,” by his friends. (By the end of the response, even the Coast Guard Commandant was using the nickname.) Nettles was based at Air Station Clearwater. As he evacuated to Lake Charles, his wife headed to work at Tulane Hospital.