Military Officer - January 2006 - (Page 63)

ally I think it’s just wonderful that our house saved lives. Luckily for them we were military, because they found my husband’s MREs. That was all they took. I’m just grateful for our lives. Watching the storm on television, it was like, here we go. It’s the storm everyone in New Orleans always talked about and knew was coming. And there it was. I felt, well, we’ll lose the house, but at least we’re all here and safe. Lt. Todd Fisher, USCG, 36, was a helicopter rescue pilot during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He and his copilot, both stationed at the Air Training Center in Mobile, Ala., rescued 58 people in a three-day period after the levees broke in New Orleans. We evacuated all the aircraft and went to Jacksonville, Fla., when Katrina was approaching. When we came back, we weren’t sure what we were coming back to. There was a lot of damage to the hangar and our station, and we were cleaning it up when the levees in New Orleans broke. It was the ﬁrst one, then the second one, then the third, then chaos. There were thousands of people trapped. When we ﬂew over the city, we could see people on what seemed like every other rooftop. What was once a ﬂourishing city was now a sea of humanity. It was so surreal. We were in a short-range helicopter (HH65) and could only pick up six people at a time, hoisting each of them up one at a time. So we had to keep going back. The fact that we were doing this in an urban environment was really difﬁcult. In the Coast Guard, water usually means safety. There aren’t usually physical hazards, and it’s what we do. But here we had towers, some buildings, and electrical wires, all sorts of things. And this water was nasty — oily and mucky. This was nothing like we’d been trained to do, and we were making it up as we went along, using our open-water skills. We were actually threading rescue baskets through the wires to reach the victims. There was a lot of teamwork and initiative involved. [What I will remember the most are] the faces of the people. We took turns hoisting people up, so I would see their faces as they came up — the kids, the babies. They were so happy to be rescued, but they had a look of despair, too. Usually when we rescue people they are overjoyed because it’s in the open water after a boat accident or something. But these JANUARY 2006 Lt. Todd Fisher (above) piloted a Coast Guard helicopter, rescuing 58 people (like those below) in New Orleans. The close-in, suburban rescue scenarios were challenging for Fisher and his copilot, who had to thread rescue baskets through wires and around other obstacles. Lt. Michael Silah (below left) ﬂew NOAA reconnaissance ﬂights over Hurricane Katrina in the days before the storm hit land. Silah photographed the storm from an altitude of 5,000 feet (center left), showing the 10- to 12-mile radius of the eye. PHOTOS: BOTTOM RIGHT, RUMBO DE SAN ANTONIO, GERMAN GARCIA/AP; ALL OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY INTERVIEWEES MILITARY OFFICER 63

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - January 2006

Contents Features Departments From the Editor Chairman's Page Board of Directors Nominations Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Member Books Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: On the Edge Storm Stories Our Brilliant, Bloody Future eXtreme Seniors Pages of History Information Exchange MOAA Scholarship Donors Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps MOAA Member Services Encore

Military Officer - January 2006

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