Peace Like A River: Military operations three weeks after Rita

Texas National Guard relief mission begins drawing down

With power coming on throughout the area, Texas National Guardsmen with Task Force-Seguin transferred food and water distribution duties to other task forces and local authorities Oct. 4.

Fleet Survey Team Locating Shipping Hazards from Hurricane

The Navy’s Fleet Survey Team (FST) at the Stennis Space Center (SSC) has conducted its second recent set of emergency maritime surveys in Louisiana waters, to determine the safety of reopening critical shipping lanes following Hurricane Rita.

Army Engineers Focus on Helping South Recover from Hurricanes

Strock said that 40 million to 70 million cubic yards of debris needs to be cleared. Exactly how much depends on whether the corps is charged with clearing private individuals' debris in addition to that from public areas. They will take private citizens' debris if they it is moved to a public area.

"If you can all remember Hurricane Andrew, (there were) about 18 million (cubic) yards of debris then," Strock said. "It took about nine months to clean up. So it's a huge effort on this."

In 30 days, about 8 million cubic yards of debris has been moved in the areas affected by the hurricanes. This was achieved by putting large contracts in place. Strock said that getting people access back into their homes and towns is a way to set conditions for recovery.

Total force proves beneficial to hurricane recovery

More than 6,900 active-duty, Guard and Reserve Airmen supported Hurricanes Katrina and Rita relief operations, proving that the total-force concept works, said the Air Force chief of staff here recently.

Hospital Ship Leaves New Orleans

The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) departed New Orleans Oct. 8 to return to her homport in Baltimore after providing several weeks of disaster relief to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

The military's humanitarian mission - Sept 24
Military operations continue in the wake of Rita - Sept 27
Navy operations in the wake of Rita - Sept 30
Marine operations in the wake of Rita - Oct 5

2 Comments:

At Wed Oct 12, 08:16:00 AM, johngrif said…

Many things come to fore in a natural disaster. The MSM has ignored the dedication of our military.
And the loyalty, strength and open heartedness of Americans for Americans.
All standing together in time of need as one people.

Facilitating one miracle after another

By Rick Cleveland
rcleveland@clarionledger.com

Tricia Myrick of Oak Grove unloads supplies at the Steve McNair Foundation distribution center in Bay St. Louis. Myrick has put her job as a financial adviser on hold and says she'll stay until the needs of the people are met, adding that God will take care of her needs.

BAY ST. LOUIS — They need ice. They need water. They need food. They need clothes and diapers.

The lucky ones need cleaning supplies, because they have something left to clean. But all too often, they need tents.

They need directions. They need advice. They need someone to talk to. Some need a hug or a shoulder to cry on.

The truth is, these days the hurricane-ravaged people of Hancock County need guardian angels. Here, in the parking lot of the Bay Plaza shopping center on U.S. 90, they find the next-best alternative in the form of caring volunteers, who are like angels on earth.

"Whatever these people need, we try to give them," says Tricia Myrick, a 35-year-old resident of Oak Grove, near Hattiesburg. "If we can't provide it, we try to find someone who can. The Lord put us here to provide."

Myrick, her best friend, Jessica Beane, and Michael Smith run a distribution center that serves people who come through in 400 to 500 cars per day. The people often arrive hungry and thirsty, with grim, sunburned faces and vacant eyes.

They are people such as Waveland resident Ann Manning, who evacuated to Somerset, Ky., before Hurricane Katrina hit and didn't return until Thursday. As so many have, she found her home and the place where she works both destroyed.

"I'm so sorry," Manning says, weeping. "I'm usually not like this. It's just that I was so incredibly happy here. I had saved and saved to move here. I finally felt like I was home, and now it's gone."

After a career in the Army, Ann Manning moved to Waveland, a town where she often had vacationed, in May. Katrina left her with next to nothing, she says.

She at least had Myrick last week to provide basic needs and much valuable information, such as where to go, whom to see and what data she would need to start putting her life back in some semblance of order.

Says Michael Smith: "Tricia just saved that woman 24 to 48 hours of standing in lines."

As Manning leaves, Myrick returns to her work, giving orders to Air National Guardsmen who are unloading another truck filled with supplies.

"Let's get a supply line going," she says.

And they do.

Says Maj. Dale Neaves, of the 255th Air Control Squadron: "We do what that lady says, because she obviously knows what she's doing. She missed her calling. She should have been a general."

Acquaintances now friends

In her former life, before Katrina, Myrick worked as an independent financial adviser in Hattiesburg. Beane, 26, was an accountant at the University of Southern Mississippi. Smith, a 25-year-old Waveland native, owned Cingular stores in Hattiesburg and Bay St. Louis. They all live in the same Bridgefield Gardens subdivision of Oak Grove, along with Rick Maddox, a 53-year-old financial adviser. They were neighbors but more like acquaintances than good friends before Katrina passed through Hattiesburg on Aug. 29.

The neighborhood cleanup brought them closer together. When Smith got power back at his Cingular store, they set up headquarters there, providing hot meals, Internet access and phone lines for people in need.

"And it mushroomed from there," Beane says. "We kept finding more ways we could help people who needed help."

A Hattiesburg dialysis clinic was running out of diesel fuel to run its generators. Patients were going to die. A doctor came into Smith's store and broke down crying.

Myrick went to work, networking through friends. She not only found 300 gallons of diesel fuel — at no cost — in Tennessee, she had it trucked down with a state police escort before the clinic ran out of fuel.

"One miracle after another," she says. "That's what we've seen. One miracle after another."

Maddox, working with the Steve McNair Foundation and Brett Favre's Four-Ward Foundation, provides many of the goods and ideas that help provide the miracles.

"I don't know how to do much of anything, but I do know people who know how to do stuff," Maddox says. "I know how to facilitate."

After about 10 days of working out of the Hattiesburg store, the operation moved to Bay St. Louis and Smith's Cingular store in the Bay Plaza shopping center. Evacuees live in their houses back in Oak Grove. Smith, Myrick and Beane have lived in the store for more than three weeks, at first sleeping in their cars, then on cots provided by the National Guard. Usually, by day's end, they have been so tired, they could sleep anywhere.

Myrick has put her real job on hold. "This is more important," she says.

Beane quit her job at USM to continue her volunteer work.

"This is where I need to be," she says. "It's changed my life. I wake up every morning with a sense of purpose, knowing that I have something to give."

Maddox makes three to four trips a week back and forth between here and Hattiesburg, working as a liaison between providers and the distribution center. He says his employers at AXA have allowed him to do what his heart tells him he needs to keep doing.

Michael Smith grew up in nearby Waveland. His father, Mike Smith, is the assistant fire chief in Waveland, a town that now scarcely exists.

"My dad worked all day and night rescuing people after the storm," Michael Smith says. "He and his men are heroes. When they slept, they slept in mud. He's my inspiration for doing what I'm doing here."

Mike Smith, the assistant fire chief, is a husky, powerfully built man with a deep voice that cracks ever-so slightly when he is asked about what his son and his son's friends are doing.

"It's incredible, really. They've helped so many people," he says, his eyes misting. "Michael and them two girls, they're like angels really."
At Wed Oct 12, 08:58:00 AM, Jeff said…

I appreciate your notices of other things going on in the Gulf. I can only scratch the surface, and it's good to be aware of other examples of the good work going on in the Gulf. And since you're much closer to the action, you are acutely aware of what's involved with getting that region back on its feet.