Chapter Appendix B - What Went Right
Section The Department of Homeland Security
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The Department of Homeland Security
Almost 6,000 U.S. Coast Guard personnel (active duty, Reserve, Auxiliary, and civilian members) from throughout the country conducted one of the largest search and rescue missions in its history as part of an even larger multi-agency, multi-level search and rescue effort. They retrieved more than 33,000 people along the Gulf Coast, including more than 12,000 by air, and 11,000 by surface, plus 9,403 evacuated from hospitals. Almost one-third of the Coast Guard's entire fleet was dedicated to rescue efforts. Coast Guard personnel also worked tirelessly in multi-agency teams to reconstitute waterways and conduct environmental assessments. They restored hundreds of buoys and channel markers that were missing or destroyed in the hurricane. Their efforts to restore these and other navigational aids and waterways, allowed maritime industry in the area to return to normal faster.
Having evacuated with boats on trailers prior to the storm, Petty Officer Jessica Guidroz, a coxswain at the Coast Guard Station New Orleans, could not return to the station by road after the hurricane passed. She and her crew launched their boat and headed toward the station. Finding the station occupied by rescued victims already, she established order at the station and then piloted a twenty-five foot boat through Metairie and Lakeview, banging on roofs and yelling, scanning for open attic windows, and convincing reluctant evacuees to leave. Learning of a large number of trapped residents, she proceeded to lead a squadron of eight boats and crews in the evacuation of approximately 2,000 people from the campus of the University of New Orleans. Like most of the station crew, she lived nearby and lost all her personal possessions to the storm, yet put her duty first. After several days piloting a boat into devastated neighborhoods, ferrying thousands of people to safety, and seeing destruction on a scale so vast that it seemed surreal, Guidroz was moved when she saw an image on television. She had been haunted by the memory of a young mother who had almost been trampled during the evacuation. She remembered how "the baby was wearing this diaper that you know hadn't been changed in days." That night, a news channel showed images from the Houston Astrodome, and there she was - the lady with the baby. "She was in Houston now, and she looked like she'd showered and her kid had on clean clothes. That moment is when it clicked," Guidroz said. "Here was someone we had actually helped, and it fell into place that we were doing something that really mattered, something really good."
Petty Officer Moises Rivera-Carrion of the Coast Guard served as a rescue swimmer aboard Coast Guard HH-60J helicopters responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. During almost three days of operations in an urban setting with hazards including unlit towers, downed power lines, and contaminated floodwaters, Petty Officer Rivera-Carrion tested the limits of his skill and endurance while rescuing 269 survivors trapped on rooftops and balconies throughout New Orleans and southwest Louisiana.
With 50 plus knot winds blowing debris, Petty Officer Rodney L. Gordon landed in the first aircraft to return to New Orleans and immediately began a series of complex electrical and mechanical repairs vital to sustaining what quickly grew into the largest air rescue operation in Coast Guard history. Scrambling to locate and cannibalize broken and non-essential equipment until supply lines could be restored, he repaired failed and failing emergency generators, power lines, and dozens of destroyed components. He restored power to vital operations and communications facilities, including the Naval Air Station control tower, enabling the successful control and dispatch of thousands of military and Coast Guard aircraft sorties on rescue and evacuation missions. Most critically, the viability of the entire joint service air rescue operation was jeopardized by the electrical failure of the base's enormous aviation fuel distribution plant. He took charge and single-handedly performed a complex rewiring of its emergency generators, enabling hundreds of aircraft to continue lifesaving missions.
The heroics of Petty Officer Guidroz, Petty Officer Rivera-Carrion and Petty Officer Rodney L. Gordon are only a few of the multiple USCG stories from Katrina. However, their stories, and many more are the reason that the Coast Guard was soon given the moniker, in a New Orleans Newspaper, of the "New Orleans Saints."
Responsible for more than 180,000 employees, the Department of Homeland Security was duly praised for the efforts of the United States Coast Guard. However, additional DHS units brought many other life-saving and order-restoring employees and talents to the preparation, response and recovery operations.
DHS Customs and Border Protection and DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaders sought to match their resources with the needs of the affected populations in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. They took clothing, toys, linens and other useful items seized and forfeited at U.S. ports of entry for violations of federal law - more than 100,000 pieces as of this writing - and delivered them directly to the victims of the hurricane and flood.18 They filled the needs of people who had lost these basic items at minimal cost to the government, using goods that they had seized during the course of everyday operations. Their practical and innovative thinking and actions helped these victims directly, returning to them some possessions, as well as the sense of security such possessions convey.
On September 5, 2005 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Federal Protection Service (FPS) Sergeant Matthew Pinardi was securing the FEMA morgue detail near Interstates 10 and 610 in New Orleans. He observed a young male riding a bike across the overpass and witnessed the man hit the retaining wall. The young man flipped over the railing and landed some fifty feet below in water over his head. Sergeant Pinardi called for additional assistance, traversed the embankment and at great personal peril entered flood waters to rescue the young man. The man was pulled to safety and transported by emergency medical services to a FEMA National Disaster Medical System medical clinic.
Staff within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) worked hard to deliver aid and services to those affected by the hurricane and flood. Drawing upon their previous experiences with natural and manmade disasters, FEMA staff distributed more than $5 billion in federal aid to more than 1.7 million households in the affected region by February 1, 2006.19 FEMA also mobilized elements of the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), such as Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs), deploying them to the Gulf States to assist with emergency health care delivery. For example, a DMAT stationed in Florida was deployed to Mississippi, where it set up operations in an abandoned medical center that had been put out of service by the flood. Over a two week period, this DMAT treated more than 3,000 patients that were able to make it to the medical center, and treated another 2,000 by sending teams of their own personnel out into the surrounding area.20
Also part of the National Disaster Medical System, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORTs) created a large, temporary morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, to support the entire state,21 and supplemented and otherwise provided mortuary services in Louisiana and Mississippi. DMORT members deployed from throughout the Nation to assist. These specialists worked with local medical, mortuary, and forensic professionals, and provided needed mortuary services, equipment, and personnel. Especially important were the services that trained personnel provided in identifying the dead. They worked with x-rays and DNA samples and communicated information with compassion to families waiting to hear news of their loved ones. Despite some primitive conditions (e.g., with only a roof and intermittent power), team members helped to identify not only those killed by the hurricane and flood, but also those bodies that were unearthed from cemeteries and mausoleums. Their duties were made even more challenging by the destruction of medical, dental and other records, and the inability of many people to accurately determine whether those people they sought were dead or missing. They drew upon both technical expertise and personal empathy to address the needs of both the dead and the living.22
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