Not so unbelievable. With the nurturing and encouragement that the culture of dirt-bags has received from the political left over the last forty years, I would expect it to be du rigeur.
Posted on 09/24/2005 8:20:03 PM PDT by kerryusama04
I'm back home for a few days while we work on our helicopters and wait for the crowd at the naval air station in NO to thin out. I flew Wednesday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday with the D.C. Guard before we left. My crew had 81 saves in the days we flew. Tuesday, I couldn't find anyone alive who needed to come out, but we marked the location of 5 bodies for retrieval. My unit got into NO as soon as the wind abated, and as soon as we could get fuel to sustain operations. I've heard that the National Guard did nothing, but the "Red Cross" helicopters did a great job. Guess what's painted on the side of our aircraft? Some observations:
1) The mayor of NO, Nagins, dropped the ball in a huge way. The whole fiasco at the Superdome and the people left there is in his lap. The Governor also is culpable.
2) We trained our enlisted men, specifically the Medics and Crew Chiefs, very hard on the rescue hoist. During our deployment in Operation Enduring Freedom, we only had 2 hoist missions. The same number is typical for an experienced Medic in a Guard Medevac unit over his whole career. We now have Medics and Crew Chiefs with 50 hoists under their belts - many of them difficult precision hoists onto car hoods, 18 wheeler cab roofs, and onto covered porches. We kept our Crew Chiefs and Medics together as battle roster crews and they developed advanced techniques early and amazed me with their skill and bravery.
3) Some people just don't get it. Yesterday, I flew over people with grills and coolers on their roofs, and they raised signs saying, "We OK." Two houses down, bodies were floating.
4) The violence you heard about was only the tip of the iceberg. One of our Guard members was with the Fish & Wildlife and deployed early to NO as security. They encountered four dead men in a neighborhood who had been shot, execution style. Their wives had been raped.
5) Our hangar in Baton Rouge housed 300 Border Patrol agents with all kinds of exotic weaponry. They were inserted into the bad neighborhoods and reportedly nailed about 25 of the goons from roving armed bands. They then just withdrew and let them lay.
6) Some have claimed that racism caused black people to be left while white people were brought out. Of the 81 people I brought out, 2 were white. Both thanked me. Only 3 other people thanked us, as I recollect. When we cruised over flooded neighborhoods, we'd say to each other, "Hey, this is a high dollar neighborhood. Let's go back to the projects." We never pulled anyone out of a good neighborhood. They left before the storm. We were trying to maximize the number of saves we had, so we'd go to the "hood."
7) There were more helicopters in NO than I've ever seen before. We lost one of our Hueys doing a rooftop pickup. He rocked back on his skids and broke through the roof, and was unable to free himself. They hoisted the crew out and recovered the aircraft with a CH-47 a few days later.
8) We all have personal firearms. I briefed my crews to expect a "Blackhawk Down" scenario if we went down. Unbelievable over a US city.
9) I flew within 100 yards of Air Force One at Louis Armstrong Int'l airport. Bush flew in and out without shutting down the airspace. I was cautioned by ATC to "not over fly THE AIRPLANE." I complied by flying back behind THE AIRPLANE and the following SUVs full of instant death.
10) Two things would have made things better for us. The first is Iridium phones. 10 at each flight facility would have made all the difference. Our radio communications sucked. The second is getting our own refuel tankers in place early. By the time they got ready to refuel us, the Naval Air Station and Louis Armstrong Int'l were pumping fuel.
11) The airspace over NO turned into the Wild West. All the other aircraft over the city were using our VHF and UHF internal frequencies for the first few days. As time went on, the airport towers came back on line and we started using the normal freqs again. I saw every conceivable helicopter over NO, including Soviet designs.
12) I'm glad to be home for a few days. The Search and Rescue phase is over. Now, it's all body retrieval and cleanup.
13) We're still waiting for the French contingent to show up. Don't hold your breath!!!
FYI...
Odd how easy it was for the BP agents to deploy and take care of business when uncle sam finally let them off the chain, huh?
ping
I believe only God is witness to many of the atrocities committed after Katrina, and He will be the only one to judge the animals who committed them.
The helicopter rescue crews did an incredible job. They are the unsung heros of this whole thing.
1) The mayor of NO, Nagins, dropped the ball in a huge way. The whole fiasco at the Superdome and the people left there is in his lap. The Governor also is culpable.
It is becoming obvious that there exists in this nation a broad undercurrent of violent opportunists who will murder and rape at will given the opportunity.
This is something the government will have a great problem in dealing with and exemplifies the dire need for Americans to be enabled with the right to bear arms in times of national emergency. At a time when gun control lobbyists are doing everything they can to confiscate our weapons, we need them now more than ever.
Time to sit up and take notice. This wasn't Africa or downtown Baghdad.
This mayhem and insurrection could easily occur in any city of the country.
Americans need to know . . .
=================================
The violence you heard about (in NOLA) was only the tip of the iceberg.One of our Guard members was with the Fish & Wildlife and deployed early to NO as security.
They encountered four dead men in a neighborhood who had been shot, execution style.
Their wives had been raped.
Not so unbelievable. With the nurturing and encouragement that the culture of dirt-bags has received from the political left over the last forty years, I would expect it to be du rigeur.
I think versions of this anarchy could explode in many large US cities if the power and water were disrupted for even one week.
Ping!
Sadly.
A week might be optimistic.
Still without power here, mabe we will get it back in a few days.
GREAT read! Thanks, Eaker.
large swaths of most large US cities are already very unsafe for some folks to travel through
No doubt about it. The lesson that should be taken to heart is that when the SHTF, what you need just to survive will not be available on any shelf in a very short period of time.
The run on gasoline in San Antonio and the surrounding areas was initially driven, I suspect, by the fear of a price hike. That's all it took to create a temporary shortage, everybody just topping off their tank.
That doesn't explain the run on other items though. People were stocking up on bottled water, eggs, milk, bread, and canned goods. Batteries were a hot item too, especially D cells common to most flashlights. Whole sections of shelves were cleaned out at our local grocery store. The cashier said they had just gotten in some bread and eggs when I went in on Thursday, but that was about it. If you were looking for those other items, you were SOL.
bttt
Most of my family lives in Baltimore, which has swathes of nice areas and ghettoes. Our flat tire policy was to run on the rim to a safe area, rather than stop in a bad area. And of course, to simply avoid the bad areas if possible, even in transit.
Imagine if this mob psychology was driven by an event that was /1/ national in scope and /2/ showed no sign of a quick solution.
The empty stores, gas stations and ATMs would only be the beginning of the nightmare.
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