With my Coast Guard retirement just 58 days away, todays 20 Years a Coastie pics continue with my Katrina experience. Specifically, the assets that were there. The Coast Guard, as well as just about everyone from the Navy to the Baltimore County Fire Department, sent in people and assets to help. These photos represent a small portion of the enormous response effort put out by people all around the country. Many of these were helicopters that were stationed on the same airfield as us, and it was quite an experience to see and hear helos taking off all day and night. And while there were literally thousands of rescuers and assets who were on scene that deserve recognition, today I would like to highlight 3 of them. The Air Traffic Controller, call sign Wizard, Captain Bruce Jones, the Commanding Officer of Air Station New Orleans, and EM2 Rodney Gordon of Air Station New Orleans. First up, Wizard. Any of you who were flying around NOLA probably remember talking to the Air Traffic Controller who was keeping an eye on everyone. In a sky full of helicopters all swarming in to conduct SAR, the Control Towers at the local airports were all down, and aircrews were maintaining visual separation from each other. Im going to try to put this in perspective for all of you non-aviators out there. Imagine you are looking for a friend standing on a busy city street. They didnt tell you where they would be, just somewhere on 5th Avenue. So you drive up 5th, splitting your focus on driving and looking for your friend. You know that stop signs and red lights will keep most of the cars coming in off the cross streets from driving in front of you, and the yellow lines in the road will keep the traffic coming from the opposite direction from hitting you. You also know that, while your attention may be a bit diverted looking for your friend, you trust, to an extent, that all the other drivers are paying more attention. You still keep an eye out, just in case someone does something stupid, but, by in large, you trust everyone to follow their directions. That is what it is like with Air Traffic Control. They keep people flying in their lanes in the sky so as to avoid a collision. The aircrew still performs their scans, but you know that people are out there keeping an eye on the big picture. Now, put yourself back on that busy street, only with no stop signs or lights, no lines in the road, and all the other drivers are looking for friends of their own. Oh, and just for fun, whenever someone is found, they just stop whenever they are, as none of the friends are on the sidewalk. That is kinda what it was like before Wizard came on scene. Everyone was bombing around, looking for people to hoist. Granted, they were talking to each other, provided they had the right frequency plugged into the radio, but I think you get the point. Wizard was like a traffic cop, directing people where to fly and helping us to avoid collisions. It was, due in large part to Wizard, that there were no mid air collisions or crashes by rescue assets during the Katrina Response. Hats off and a big thank you to them for keeping us safe. Next up, Captain Bruce Jones, CO of Air Station New Orleans. I have worked for alot of different COs over my career, and although my 2 weeks in NOLA durring Katrina was the only time I worked directly for him, Captain Jones ranked up there as one of the best. He was a quiet sorce of strength for the crew, and not only those from NOLA, but for those of us who came in to assist. I think it would have been easy for some to go to General Condition Freak Out by either holding too tight to the reigns by micromanaging people, or too loosely by not being there to play politics. Captain Jones had the perfect balance of trusting his people to get the job done and maintaining his distance from every single detail, while at the same time, quietly checking in with just about everyone to ensure thay had what they needed. From where I sat, he was the perfect man to lead the unit through a very tough time. Last up, is EM2 Rodney Gordon. In any mission like Katrina, the shear scope of it is so large that most people will never know who the support crewmembers were. Everyone who watched the news probably remembers seeing the hovering helicopters, Pilots and Rescue Swimmers being interviewed, and people making statements and giving updates, such as the Police Chief and the Mayor. But for every one of them, there are hundreds of people working behind the scenes, supporting the mission. From the Ice Delivery guy, to the cook who ran our portable galley, to the ISC St. Louis whom I worked with to set up the Trailer Park for the crew to live in. But one Support person made more of an impact on the actual mission of saving lives than just about anyone else. EM2 Rodney Gordon. Now, we all know that helicopters require fuel to run. No big surprise there. But here are a few details about that. 1. The average fuel load of a H-65 Helicopter is 1600 pounds, or about 238 gallons. Taking away a reserve that we land with, and you end up with each flight of about 2.5 hours requiring 200 gallons of fuel. 2. The Coast Guard refueling truck holds 5,000 gallons, but is usually filled to 4,500 gallons to allow for defueling, if needed. 3. When the power went out to the Navy Refueling farm at NAS-JRB New Orleans (which is where the Coast Guard Air Station is), the helos had what was in their tanks and whatever the refueling truck had in it to fly and conduct SAR. Assuming the fuel truck was topped up to 4,500 gallons, and the 5 helos all had a full bag of gas, that works out to about 28 sorties (or flights). 28 flights. Less than 14 hours of continuous flight time, and the initial 5 helos were grounded. Enter EM2 Rodney Gordon. Working by flashlight at night, he was able to get the power restored and the pumps running at the Navy Fuel Farm, enabling the unit to top off their Fuel Truck as needed. This, in turn, helped to enable those 14 hours and 28 flights to be extended to 4,423 hours on 1,856 sorties, which saved over 7,100 lives. Now, that is not all because of EM2 Gordon, of course. But he optimized what is at the core of all Coasties. When a task is in front of you thats not really your job on unfamiliar equipment, you figure it out and get it done. And when others go out and do great things, it is sometimes because of the small part you played that let them make the largest impact. If you are interested in reading more about Captain Jones, EM2 Gordon, or the Coast Guards response to Katrina, check out the PDF File here: https://uscg.mil/history/katrina/docs/DarkestDay.pdf
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 22:59:33 +0000
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