Coast Guard's Response to Katrina a Silver Lining in the Storm

Woodmonkey · 09-06-2005, 11:51

Quote:

Coast Guard's Response to Katrina a Silver Lining in the Storm

Quote:

Let's have a round of cheers for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out Coast Guard stations in Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., and looters wrecked part of its New Orleans base. But that did not stop the Coast Guard from sending out rescue helicopters and cutters on dangerous and exhausting missions to save lives and clear waterways after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

"We started the night that the storm hit," Jason Shepard , a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, said yesterday in an interview from Mobile, Ala., one of the agency's staging bases for Katrina.

Shepard, who carries the formal title of aviation survival technician first class and has served in the Coast Guard for 18 years, called the Katrina rescue effort "probably the biggest thing that has happened in our careers."

Coast Guard crews have rescued 22,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Petty Officer Andrew Kendrick , a Coast Guard spokesman in St. Louis, estimated yesterday.

The Coast Guard, in many ways, is a model agency. It is relatively small -- with about 45,000 uniformed and civilian employees -- and believes in "cross-training" so that each employee can perform more than one job.

It also is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard's response to Katrina in recent days has again illuminated the importance of capable leadership and a clear chain of command in agencies during a crisis. Hopefully, as Congress moves to probe how the government handled the Katrina crisis, the Coast Guard can serve as a model for fixing what's wrong elsewhere in Homeland Security, including what many perceive as poor leadership at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliott , who is helping oversee rescues from Mobile, said the agency set up a unified command with states and local industries before the hurricane roared ashore.

"We know how to join with other organizations to get the job done," he said. "We were out the door as soon as the winds died down."

Elliott has been getting by on three to four hours of sleep each day for the past week. Shepard said rescue operations are running round-the-clock, with crews working "anywhere from six- to 18-hour missions, depending on what was going on."

The work is demanding. Rescue crews that normally would be asked to pluck about 20 people from danger on a tough day have been "doing 100 to 120 hoists" in adverse conditions that include heat and humidity and exposure to contaminated water kicked up by chopper rotors, Shepard said.

The work is hazardous. Pilots have had to hover between electrical and phone wires and drop cables from heights of 10 to 180 feet, Shepard said.

The Coast Guard trains personnel to rescue people from buildings, trees, mountain cliffs and sinking ships. While the employees often specialize in certain types of operations, they all train to a standard so that they can form up as teams in emergencies, with each person knowing what each job entails and how it fits into overall operations.

As Katrina approached, the Coast Guard pulled its regional command out of New Orleans and relocated to St. Louis. Aircraft and cutters were dispersed out of the storm's path.

The Coast Guard has put about 100 chopper crews, typically made up of four people, in the air each day for the past week and has flown more than 900 sorties, Kendrick said.

Shepard and Elliott said their great satisfaction has come in helping pull families and children to safety. "It is amazing the lives that we have saved," Elliott said. "It is a great feeling to be a part of this operation."

Click here for the source
of this article

ollie · 09-10-2005, 13:02

The Nation's Pulse
In the Eye of the Storm
By Jay D. Homnick
Published 9/9/2005 12

00 AM
Thank God for the Coast Guard. Those boys were in New Orleans in no time, sun-up the first Monday morning, following the eye of the hurricane with an eye to saving people's lives. Those fellows did not blink.

Oh, you can knock Chertoff, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were giving the shirts off their backs to help folks. You can knock Landrieu, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were landing on roofs to pick people up. You can knock Nagin, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were busting their noggins to help in any way possible. You can knock the Parish leaders, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were ensuring that survivors did not perish. You can knock Bush, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who worked every waking moment to help, even when they were bushed. And you can knock FEMA, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who gave from their heart, seeking neither FAME nor fortune.

Which takes me back to a time in the late 1980s, when I was privileged to work closely with one of the great American philanthropists, Morris Esformes of Chicago. (A great deal of my scholarship and skills was acquired during the more than two years that I was supported by a talent-development grant from his foundation.) During that time, he was called in for an audit by the IRS. The agent in charge immediately attacked him with this question: "According to your return, you made two million dollars last year and gave away one million to charity. Why would you give away half the money you worked for?"

Morrie explained to the agent that he was looking at it the wrong way. "The real question is: why would I bother trying to make a second million when I could live very nicely on the first? The answer is that my entire motivation in pushing myself to produce that second million was to be able to support the individuals and institutions that strengthen this country and the Jewish People."

This is the very approach that needs to be applied to the Coast Guard. We are so used to reporting on politicians that we have grown cynical. Every time we see someone perform some act of assistance to another, we immediately start figuring which votes he was looking to buy. By always looking for the angles we are blinded from seeing the angels. These young men joined the service not to build self-esteem or get college grants; they did it to contribute to the welfare of our nation and society.

Their early image of heroism, broadcast widely, has served to inspire the munificence of many. Volunteers have streamed from many surrounding states, mostly from Florida, perennial target of torrent and gust. Hearts have opened, hands have opened, wallets have opened, and through them the beautiful flower of a nation's goodness has begun to open shyly toward the sun.

Feuds have been set aside so that food can be set aside. A flood of bottled water has been offered. Cash donations are reaching their high-water mark. People are taking vacation time to go and help people vacate. And the collective body of taxpayers is happy for the government to pump our levies into machinery that will enable them to pump the levees. We accept the changes necessary to secure rescue.

No more "what have you done for me lately?" No more "what's in it for me?" The question now goes the other way: "what can I do for you?" Put all truisms away and make way for the season of altruism. But can it long endure? Can we the people continue governing our behavior for the people?

I think I can answer that question with some confidence. The boys of the Coast Guard have shown us the way. It's like the time that Sammy Davis Jr. was driving with Joey Bishop in the passenger seat and an officer pulled them over for doing eighty in a 60 mph zone. The cop chastised Sammy for not keeping his eye on the speedometer. At that point, Joey cut in. "The man only has one eye. Do you want him to watch the road or the speedometer?"

When we try to keep one eye on the humanitarian situation and one eye on the political fallout, we wind up with one blind eye and one greedy eye. We need to use only the one eye, the eye that looks out but not in, that seeks and sees the need of the other. As long as we are the pupils of that eye, the eye of Katrina will lose its lash.

Jay D. Homnick is a columnist for JewishWorldReview.com and a contributor to the Reform Club.

Bluehawk · 09-10-2005, 17:14

Maybe Katrina is what it took to awaken Americans to what Coasties do and have done every day.

Woodmonkey · 09-10-2005, 19:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluehawk

Maybe Katrina is what it took to awaken Americans to what Coasties do and have done every day.

We in Oregon already appreciated the Coast Guard. They have rescused swimmers, people who got caught stuck on rocks after the tide came in, fishermen etc. This showed them in force rescuing thousands.

Bluehawk · 09-11-2005, 07:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodmonkey

We in Oregon already appreciated the Coast Guard. They have rescused swimmers, people who got caught stuck on rocks after the tide came in, fishermen etc. This showed them in force rescuing thousands.

Good for Oregon.

Now, as for the remaining 49 states and their inhabitants.

Perhaps we might now be able to add Louisiana and Mississippi, unless the Congressional Black Caucus thinks the Coast Guard is not part of the Federal government.

ollie · 09-11-2005, 07:49

Its a shame It took something like Katrina for the American people to realize the value of the Coast Guard, Blue. Our Search and Rescue patrols, ever constant and vigilant are kin to the Air Force's age of the SAC air patrols. Hardly anyone gave them a thought but they were there protecting the nation just the same.

Its partially the Coast Guard's own fault though:
1) when do you see CG recruiting advertizing on the TV -mostly late night?
2) Until 9/11, did you ever see or where you ever concerned that the CG ran its entire service on the annual budget for one air craft carrier.
3) Unless you were a coastal state you never gave the Coast Guard a second thought.
4) How many Americans out there are aware of Posse Comitatus and our ability to operate much more quickly due to the lack of red tape for the CG to operate with/for civilians.
5) The average citizen gives it nary a second thought, yet we are responsible for Search and Rescue, national defense, aides to Navigation (bouys, light houses, etc), maritime safety inspections, port security, we even operate the ice breakers that keep the passages open to our facilities in the arctic and antarctic,
6)enforcing fishing treaties, drug interdiction.
7) gun and cigarette smuggling.
8) Support operations in Iraq

Does any citizen know about items 5,6,7,8? We have 39,000 active duty people scattered around the globe to perform the above enumerated missions. Its not the citizen's fault. Its the Coast Guard's for not educating the general public. Even with Katrina, its the zoomie piece of the Coast Guard fleet that's getting all the press. What about the 87 foot patrol boats out there in the gulf when Katrina was bearing down on Mississippi, Florida and Louisana? If I was the Coast Guard commandant, I would be screaming bloody murder for more money, more men (at least double) and more cutters.

Every Coastie and Coastie vet is bursting with pride right now and rightly so. How soon will they forget though, remember your Rudyard Kipling poem, Tommie? Same thing will happen here in the end. And we'll just go quietly on using old inferior equipment doing the impossible with fewer numbers because Coast Guard bureaucracy is more interested in not rocking the boat and keeping up the "we can do anything with nothing" notion.

But I don't want to take away from what the current crop of Coasties (even if most are airdales) is doing. They are making me real proud to have been a Coastie, BRAVO ZULU to them all.

ollie