AUGUSTA, Maine — As Hurricane Joaquin approached the East Coast, the Maine National Guard was put on alert to respond, just like members did a decade ago when Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.
“The Maine National Guard is monitoring the storm and has begun preparations should we be called upon,” Maj. Norman Stickney, spokesman for the Maine National Guard, said Monday. “We remain fully prepared to mobilize wherever and whenever we are needed.”
Joaquin is blamed for a missing cargo ship, the 790-foot El Faro, that officials believe sunk with a crew of 33, at least four from Maine.
The hurricane is not expected to hit Maine, but that doesn’t mean Maine Guard units will not be called to help, Stickney said. When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast early in the morning on Aug. 29, 2005, it was 19 days later when the first of four Maine Guard units left to assist.
Eleven members of the Maine Air Guard’s 101st Air Refueling Wing’s Security Forces Squadron deployed to Gulfport, Mississippi, on Sept. 17, 2005. Three days later, 20 members of Air Guard’s 265th Combat Communications Squad deployed to Lake Charles, Louisiana. On Sept 30, 2005, 15 members of the Maine Army Guard’s 112th Medical Company with three UH-60s Blackhawk helicopters deployed to Naval Air Station New Orleans to provide medical evacuation support in the New Orleans area. The last group — 163 members of the Army Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion — left Maine on Oct. 3, 2005, for the Gulf Coast, a post they held for about a month.
“You saw the footage and the videos on the television but you didn’t really see it,” Maj. Lisa Sessions said Saturday, recalling responding to Katrina as a platoon leader for the 133rd.
“Boats that shouldn’t be in trees were in trees,” said Sessions, who is now with the 52nd Troop Command. “Big barges, that should not not been on land were on land. Entire blocks of streets were just rubble. It’s incredible to think water can do so much damage.”
“We saw quite a bit of devastation on the way, flying over the different districts,” Maj. Amy Johnston, who flew a rescue helicopter a decade ago and is now an operations manager for the 521st Troop Command Battalion, said Friday. “The buildings looked like Legos under water. There were still ‘Xs’ on houses of homes that had been cleared. Those showed just the gravity of the scenario.”
“It was just unbelievable,” Blackhawk helicopter pilot Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jon Campbell said Friday. “It looked like something from a zombie apocalypse. I’ve been to a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of things, but nothing as bad as this.”
The 112th Medical Company, now known as the 126th Aviation Medevac, did medical evacuations and the 133rd provided security at a Red Cross station, at first, then was dispatched to St. Bernard Parish in the hard-hit 9th Ward.
“The mayor asked us to clean up a community park. I thought, ‘Of everything we could do, you want us clean up a park?’” Sessions recalled. “He told us the park was the heart of the community and that nobody wanted to come back. He just wanted to give people hope. To say that not everything was destroyed.”
The members of the 133rd are waiting to hear how proposed federal cuts to the total number of National Army Guard members will affect them, the state’s largest unit, and others in Maine.
The Maine military personnel who went to Louisiana returned home with a renewed sense of patriotism. Sessions, Johnston and Campbell said they were all champing at the bit to travel to Louisiana to help a decade ago, and have the same feeling waiting for the call with Joaquin, especially with Mainers listed amongst the missing.
“That’s why we’re here,” Campbell said Thursday, shortly after his helicopter crew returned from rescuing three Appalachian Trail hikers caught off guard by rising floodwaters. “Pretty much every state on the East Coast has been called to ask how many crews and helicopters are available.”