Who: Robert R. Milner III\r\nWhat: Hurricane Katrina\r\nWhen: August 2005\r\nWhere: New Orleans,LA \r\n\r\nWords can\'t describe what I experienced in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Words can\'t describe the look on the face of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been trapped in her attic with her dead parents. Words can\'t describe the way a twenty five year old police officer looked after he had stopped counting the number of people he had to shoot and a third of his police department had turned in their badges and left town. I\'ll tell you a little bit more about my experiences in New Orleans but first let me tell you how I ended up there.\r\n\r\nI work full time selling Bar-coding and RFID technology in Memphis, TN. My hobby, other life, obsession, whatever you want to call it is training Search and Rescue dogs with Tennessee Task Force One. TNTF-1 is one of 30 FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces in the United States. We respond to hurricanes, terrorist attacks and earth quakes. The task force is made up of fireman and civilians from the Memphis area. Paramedics, structural engineers, K-9 Handlers, Haz Mat specialists, logistics specialists and other specialists. An average member under goes 200 to 400 hours of non-paid training a year in their free time. We must be able leave Memphis, TN within six hours of a phone call from FEMA. When we deploy, we go as either a 28 man Light Task Force or as an 70 man full task force. We are sworn in as FEMA employees and head for the disaster. I got involved about five years ago. My father heads up the dog training program and he was the Program Director for a year and a half. He was recently deployed as the task force leader to hurricane Ophelia and as a staff liaison to hurricane Rita. If you would like to see some good video clips of the task force then you need to order the CSCMP video. The logistics of moving a warehouse of rescue equipment and personnel to a disaster can be quite complicated.\r\n\r\nMany times we are deployed to hurricanes and are on stand-by until the local authorities need help. Many times, especially when there is not much damage, we return home fairly quickly. This was not the case with Hurricane Katrina; we were gone for ten days.\r\n\r\nOn Friday, August 26th Hurricane Katrina was heading towards the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 Hurricane. Having been on a couple of short hurricane deployments before, I told my new boss that I would probably only be gone for three or four days. We drove late Saturday night to Shreveport, LA to get closer to the impact point. As I sat in a Shreveport hotel on Sunday August 28th, Katrina had strengthened to a strong Category Five Hurricane and was heading for New Orleans. I had heard before that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen and I knew then that this was not going to be a short deployment.\r\n\r\nOn Monday night we arrived in the flooded city of New Orleans. Our convoy was instructed to sleep in the parking lot of a SAM\'s Store, which was supposedly a safe area. We had seen a couple of fires and a little bit of flooding but we had no idea what we were about to see the next morning. The next day was organized chaos as FEMA assigned us to a search and rescue mission near I-10 and I-610. Most of the city was under water and we had to use the interstates to get around the city and as boat ramps. We had not trained for a disaster of this type and had to adapt quickly. We didn\'t do much searching the first couple of days because people were trapped on rooftops everywhere. We used jon boats to transport victims to safety and to medical professionals. Tennessee\'s Task Force along with Missouri\'s Task Force rescued 368 people the first day.\r\n\r\nFEMA Urban Search and Rescue used the New Orleans Saints training camp as a base of operations. We slept in tents on the pavement and used water bottles to shower with. The first few days we ate a lot of MRE\'s(Meals Ready to Eat). Helicopters landed about 500 yards from our tents. Later in the week as more helicopters had arrived, one would land every ten to fifteen minutes night and day. We had to get used to the sound of helicopters landing in order to sleep!\r\n\r\nWe had to quit rescuing people before it became dark which was very frustrating because we wanted to stay up all night long saving people. It was tough going to sleep at night knowing that people were dying just a few miles away from our camp. The next days we continued to rescue people and we became numb to our frustrations. We transported people to dry land where helicopters were evacuating people. Sometimes we would have to stop bringing people because the helicopters were being overwhelmed by evacuees crowding them and their wasn\'t enough security to keep the crowds under control. Sometimes people wanted to go back to their houses because they were tired of sitting on the interstate in the hot sun waiting to be transported. People from nice and bad neighborhoods were angry, tired and hungry. Many thought the water would go down quickly and wanted to stay. Many didn\'t really know what was going on because they could not watch TV or listen to the radio. We told many that if they did not go with us that they would probably die. Some said that they had food and water and that they were probably safer staying. One day we sat and did nothing because FEMA stopped all rescues due to angry residents shooting at rescuers, police and helicopters.\r\n\r\nI think that one of the most frustrating moments was when all of the task forces lined up in a convoy for President Bush when he flew over. FEMA spent a whole morning getting a long convoy of all the rescue personnel together just to \"impress\" Bush as he flew over. A half a day was wasted and people were dying because FEMA wanted to put on a show for Bush.\r\n\r\nAs more rescuers, volunteers and others arrived, the more disorganized it seemed to get. Traffic was terrible and it took a while to get to the areas that we were assigned to search. One day we were transported by military helicopters to search areas inaccessible by vehicles.\r\n\r\nAs FEMA employees we aren\'t allowed to carry weapons. We had just a couple of police officers with handguns as our security most of the time. One day I was assigned the job of watching rooftops for snipers. That was definitely something I had not been trained for. We should have had a lot more protection! Later on in the week we had the Chicago SWAT Team assigned to us and I felt somewhat safer.\r\n\r\nFEMA was clearly not capable of handing a disaster of this size and they should have had the military involved a lot quicker. I am not going to point fingers but I will say that FEMA obviously did not have a good plan for this disaster especially since they knew it would happen. I remember talking with some lawyers from FEMA at Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and they said New Orleans was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Planning and Communication were obviously lacking and this caused most of the chaos. FEMA does a great job at handling many disasters but they were definitely overwhelmed with this one. I think that there will probably be some major restructuring of FEMA over the next couple of years. If a disaster of this magnitude happens any time soon, I think President Bush will get the military involved fairly quickly. Their needs to be better leadership first and then better collaboration and planning between different government agencies and even the private sector. Many companies and civilians wanted to help and contribute but didn\'t know how to go about doing it. I know this is easier said than done but at the same time it could not have gotten much worse than what happened with Hurricane Katrina. We definitely have room for improvement! \r\n\r\nOriginally posted on the Memory Archive: http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/Hurricane_Katrina_Search_and_Rescue%2C_August_2005%2C_by_Robert_R._Milner_III