Air Force vets from Westhampton Beach rescue wing recall Hurricane Katrina mission

The devastation wrought on New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina revealed itself to the crew of a Westhampton Beach-based Air National Guard helicopter two decades ago by what they couldn't see below.

New Orleans, also known as the Big Easy or the Crescent City, seemingly no more, much of it covered in water that had breached flood walls and rushed in after the storm made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, as a category 3 hurricane.

"We fly across a very long bridge, Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. I just remember being stunned by the complete flooding of that city," said now-retired Air Force Col. Michael F. Canders, who commanded the 106th Rescue Wing of the New York Air National Guard at the time.

A city underwater

Canders, who piloted one of two helicopters from the 106th for the last-minute mission, told Newsday this week about his first look at what Katrina had left behind.

"I had been to that city many times before and did not realize it was below sea level," Canders said. "And as we came across the bridge into the city, everywhere you looked — 360 [degrees] — it was underwater."

To see the city he had come to love submerged, he said, "was shocking."

Canders, along with fellow now-retired chief master sergeants on the mission, Brian Mosher and Michael Kurtz, recalled their rescue efforts in an interview with Newsday this week as Friday's 20th anniversary of the hurricane's landfall approached. The storm brought 145 mph winds to go along with the flooding and wreaked havoc across three states, killing 1,392 people, according to the most up-to-date estimates.

The rescue team from Westhampton Beach had done final preparations for deployment to Afghanistan that August when they got the call to respond to Katrina first. The team spent three days in New Orleans — to Sept. 1 to 3, 2005 — before returning their focus to heading overseas. 

Specific tasks

Each crew member had a specific task in New Orleans: Canders piloted the helicopter; Mosher served as a pararescueman; and Kurtz, the all-important flight engineer who operated a hoist to lower Mosher and the others down on rooftops, buildings and even cars to help lift people into the helicopter.

Canders said they landed in Jackson, Mississippi, where rescue operations were based, because in New Orleans "there was no place to land, no electricity, no food or water."

He was struck by what he saw once they headed into the flooded city to begin rescue efforts, which occurred day and night.

But they had a mission to complete.

Canders said about 40 people from the 106th were part of the New Orleans rescue effort in various capacities, such as pilots of helicopters and the crew of a transport plane — which could refuel helicopters in midair — the six pararescuemen, and a maintenance crew. 

Canders, now 69 and an associate professor of aviation at Farmingdale State College, noted with pride that the 106th — which this year marks its 50th anniversary — represents the best of Long Islanders.

"They're your friends. They're your neighbors. ... The 106th is still very much engaged in everything you see, whether it's wartime, whether its domestic or international," he said. "We can go anywhere, do anything."

Mosher, now 52, a retired chief master sergeant, is the training and qualifications manager at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton. He was the team leader of the six pararescuemen sent to New Orleans. 

Katrina, then Afghanistan

A few weeks after helping rescue people in New Orleans, he and the rest of the pararescuemen deployed to Afghanistan, Mosher said.

Before that, there were pressing needs closer to home. Mosher said there was a "mix" of rescue efforts in New Orleans by himself and his fellow crew members — "PJs" for short, for their old name of parajumpers.

"We winded up saving 161 folks," he said.

The pararescuemen had been preparing for Afghanistan, Mosher added, and they were buying all kinds of equipment for their deployment to the war.

"One of the things we needed in Afghanistan was extrication equipment," he said. When they got the orders to temporarily shift their focus to New Orleans, they brought along the extrication equipment, as well as inflatable boats.

"We have extrication equipment, we have litters [portable gurneys for the injured], we have rope systems. So we go into these areas and do a lot of different things. We're able to get somebody out of any situation," Mosher said, adding that PJs are also paramedics.

"The pararescue men were really highly trained medical technicians. They would tell us this person needs to go to the triage hospital [at Louis Armstrong Airport], or this person was OK," Canders said.

The PJs "would be hoisted down" onto the top of buildings, homes or roofs of cars, Mosher recalled. Sometimes, he said, they found themselves "wading through some nasty water." Many times they would enter large apartment buildings, going "room to room, floor to floor," talking to people to find out their circumstances.

To stay or to go

"Some people wanted to go and some people wanted to stay. We had to have those conversations," he said.

"We did 48 hoists the first night," said Kurtz, now 71, also a retired chief master sergeant.

"And we were lifting them out of the water and putting them on the side of an overpass, a cloverleaf," he added, referring to an intersection of a highway that Canders said was used as a drop-off point for those rescued who didn't need medical attention.

For Kurtz, an indelible image was seeing a "body floating. That body, I flew past it many times. We just didn't have the resources to tend to people that were dead. Eventually, I'm sure he was picked up by boat crews."

One notable rescue involved a family of eight who had to be extricated through the roof of their house, Canders said. 

In a scene like several others that played out several times on televised coverage of Katrina, the helicopter crew from the 106th were alerted by a man on a rooftop waving a white shirt who had printed in white paint on the roof: "mother-sister-wife 3 children, 8-12-14- 9-month baby ... no food no water please help," according to a photo Canders provided.

Canders said of the PJs' efforts: "They actually had a pickax a chain saw and they were working" under "trying conditions" to make a hole in that roof, citing intense heat and humidity.

"Our pararescuemen, Jeff Green and Rocco Pergola, just two strong, tough guys ... they take each member of the family, one at a time, up through that hole." He said everyone was "in pretty good shape. There was no one requiring immediate medical attention. So we brought them to the cloverleaf."

Canders said he saw several buses "pointing west on I-10. We were told those buses were going to Houston to take many of these survivors ... for whatever period."

The rescue team didn't know the names of the family, according to Canders.

"We're there to serve," he said. "We help them and we don't know their names. There's 161 people. We met them 20 years ago. We hope they're OK. I hope they all had great lives."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Katrina's classification on the hurricane wind scale when it made landfall in Louisiana.