Editor's Note: Twenty years ago, the Coast Guard displayed its enduring role as America’s maritime first responder. The disaster tested the strength of survivors, responders and the very fabric of our nation. Throughout it all, our members gave 125 percent. They did not rest. They did not give up. The National Coast Guard Museum just launched a new website dedicated to those responders’ devotion to duty, courage, humanity, and most of all their selflessness. This story is excerpted from a longer piece that appears on that site. Read the full story here.
More than a week after Hurricane Katrina left most of New Orleans underwater, hope was fading. Medical experts said it was unlikely anyone was still alive inside the flooded homes.
Lt. Alfred Jackson motored slowly through a drowned neighborhood. From flat-bottomed boats, he and his 18-member team were using spray paint to identify homes that would need body bags . Suddenly, someone thought they heard something.
“Kill the engines,” Jackson ordered.
In the eerie quiet, they heard a metallic tapping. Closer now, they saw a man in a second-story attic window, striking its metal bars with a quarter. He and his bedridden, 87-year-old mother had been trapped for days in water up to their necks.
Jackson’s team sawed through the attic ceiling. The mother was barely conscious, her skin peeling after prolonged exposure to floodwater. They moved her carefully onto the roof, calling in a medevac. Improbably, the boat crew had just saved two more lives.
While Coast Guard helicopters grabbed headlines with dramatic rooftop rescues, the majority of Katrina’s survivors were saved by small boat crews like Lt. Jackson’s. Slowly, quietly, they navigated the submerged city. But because space in the boats was needed for evacuees, their efforts were rarely captured on camera.
Visit the National Coast Guard Museum site for the full story.