The Civil Industry Responds: One Team’s Story Two pilots and a mechanic discover “what they could do” to help a devastated city.
AS AMERICAN EUROCOPTER (NOW AIRBUS Helicopters North America) pilots Bruce Webb and Frank Kanauka approached New Orleans early in the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2005, they fully expected to encounter a bit of chaos.
“My rule was, I
carry only people, no things.”
The two pilots, along with mechanic Bob Hernandez, had been dispatched by then–American Eurocopter President Marc Paganini with two helicopters, some cash (they assumed, correctly, that the devastated city would be off the grid and unable to process credit cards), and orders to “see what they could do” to help after what was then the worst hurricane in US history. But nothing could have prepared them for the next week. “They didn’t know what to do with us,” Webb
recalls, when he and Kanauka arrived. The two had landed their aircraft at the Superdome, and Webb had gone in search of the person in charge of the powerless (and therefore dark, hot, and ridiculously humid) indoor stadium holding tens of thousands of storm refugees. Finally, Webb found the person in charge: a general (Webb never found out his name or service branch), who asked him, “Who are you working for?” To which Webb could only reply, “I guess you.” And so, for the next seven days Webb and his small EC120 and Kanauka, flying a larger EC135, volunteered as first responders. At first, they and Hernandez, who came along to care for their aircraft and to manage logistics,
formed one of the few civilian helicopter teams in the storm zone. But by the time the trio headed back to their Texas headquarters (leaving their helicopters behind to be flown by replacement teams), more than 400 helicopters, including more than 50 operated by civilian companies and individuals, were filling the skies over the 200-mile-wide storm zone. “The No. 1 thing I remember was Omaha 44 and Omaha 45. If you ask someone if they were flying at Katrina, and those words don’t mean something to them, then they weren’t there,” Webb says. “Omaha 44 and Omaha 45 were the military aircraft
that controlled your ability to enter the game, so to speak,” Webb explains. FAA operations were effectively offline for a couple of weeks, so early on after the storm passed, two military planes assumed overwatch duties, doing their best to control access to the skies over New Orleans and to keep the 600 or more helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft supporting the relief efforts from bumping into one another. On their way into New Orleans, Webb says, “Frank and I topped off at Houma,” a New Orleans suburb just across the Mississippi River, where they also left Hernandez to find a place for them to stay and to set up a makeshift helicopter support operation at the local municipal airport. Once they started working for the general, they both began shuttling refugees with medical issues northwest to the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where a medical triage unit had been set up.
Right: Katrina
survivors on their way to shelter in the Superdome; opposite, top: the
EC120, just east of New Orleans;
opposite, middle:
pilots Bruce Webb (left) and Frank
Kanauka in front of the Superdome.
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