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 full piece that appears on the museum's site.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating natural disasters in U.S. history, brought the Coast Guard into unprecedented rescue, recovery, and coordination roles. Crews rescued over 33,000 people and nearly one-third of the Coast Guard’s fleet was dedicated to the response.
From evacuating stranded survivors to reopening critical waterways, the Coast Guard (USCG) performed heroically, but the widespread disaster exposed operational limitations that soon served as lessons learned. 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, the Coast Guard has undergone sweeping changes in readiness, technology, and interagency collaboration.
Operating in an Urban Environment
The Coast Guard’s standard search and rescue (SAR) tactics were suddenly inadequate as rescue teams faced debris-filled flood waters and rooftop rescues. Members had to improvise in real time.
Coxswains navigated “johnboats,” aluminum hulled vessels, through flooded city streets with cars and other debris often lying unseen just below the surface. Unpredictable water levels often grounded the boats, forcing crews to wade into shallow, polluted waters – under a blazing sun – in order to carry the heavy vessels until they reached deeper water. Heat exhaustion was an ever-present concern. After Katrina, the Coast Guard introduced lighter, inflatable boats that were far easier to carry when necessary.
Katrina also revealed the need for tools not typically carried by aircrews. To escape the rising water, many New Orleans residents raced up to their attics, where they found themselves trapped. One of the most gripping and well-documented rescues was when Aviation Survival Technician 2nd Class Joel Sayers responded to a woman on her home’s roof – her husband wasn’t able to fit through a hole and she had to leave him behind.
As Coast Guard Aviation History wrote, “After several failed attempts to widen the hole and free the man using the helicopter’s crash ax, Sayers knew he needed something with more weight and strength if he was to save the man trapped inside.”
Sayers borrowed an ax from a local fireman and returned for the husband, widening the hole and rescuing him.
Word quickly spread. Coast Guard rescue swimmers started asking firemen for their axes when they landed to offload their rescued passengers. And as they came back to the station, crews reported all this up their chain of command.
“The extraordinary thing about it was that we realized, ‘Hey, we’re in a new ballgame here. We’re going to have to change our tactics,’ said Capt. David Callahan, who was in command at Aviation Training Center (ATC) Mobile, in an interview a few weeks into the response. “And I’m not sure who it was, I think it was the XO [Executive Officer], ordered folks to go out to Home Depot and that night we bought every wood ax and saw. . .we could find and started outfitting our rescue swimmers with those to adapt to this new urban rescue environment that we were in. So I may go to jail for buying all those axes and saws, but I don’t think so.”
Keep reading on the museum's site.