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.

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.

Hernandez recalls one very tiny patient they evacuated: a baby born overnight in the Superdome, at the peak of the storm’s intensity. The little girl’s name? Katrina.

The pilots then moved to shuttling people off the I-10 causeway. Because power was out across the city, Webb, flying a VFR ship, had difficulty maintaining visual references after the sun went down. He followed closely behind Kanauka, whose EC135 was IFR equipped and had a much better searchlight.

The first day they arrived, they flew until about 2 am the next day, until exhaustion forced them to remain overnight in Lafayette, Louisiana. There they grabbed a few hours’ sleep on the floor of Acadian Ambulance’s helicopter base before flying back to Houma early the next morning and reconnecting with Hernandez. He’d snagged what seemed to be the only two rooms still available, at a bed-and-breakfast owned and run by a judge and his wife. The two pilots shared the “honeymoon suite” while Hernandez bedded down in a much smaller room.

“The judge and his wife treated us very well. They had all sorts of great food waiting for us at night when we came back. I can’t tell you how good that was,” Hernandez says.

Otherwise, the days were long, tense, and sad. Upon landing atop Tulane University Hospital, where the lower three floors were under water and the power was out, both ships would keep their rotors turning as nurses ushered passengers aboard. The trick was to land, load, and leave quickly, making way for the next helicopter coming in.

The hospital’s evacuation took more than a full day to complete. The last ones out were teams of doctors and nurses, whom Kanauka described as having “that thousand-mile stare,” exhausted from having worked 48 hours or more without sleep or food.

Everywhere the team looked, they saw people confronting loss—of a loved one, a home, or a life they had once lived. Out on I-10, Webb recalls ordering a man carrying his briefcase to either toss the briefcase or get out. He chose to get out.

“I could take three people in the back and one up front with me. My effective cargo limit was 1,000 lb., or four passengers. They didn’t understand how critical my weight issue was,” Webb says. “My rule was, I carry only people, no things.”

A couple of hours later, he plucked four more passengers off of I-10, including that same businessman. This time, his briefcase was nowhere to be seen.

Another time, Webb, shouting to be heard over the engine’s roar, told a passenger who’d just climbed into the front seat next to him not to touch any controls. The young woman, likely in shock, couldn’t speak and began sobbing uncontrollably. “I had to shout, and I had to hear her acknowledge that she knew not to touch the controls. But I felt so bad. She was so scared,” he says.

During one search-and-rescue mission, Kanauka came across a half-destroyed shack where a few people had gathered to await help. He landed nearby, got out, gave them a few bottles of water that he had with him, and left with five passengers aboard. Those who remained begged him to bring food.

Upon his return, with Webb and his EC120 in tow, a much larger group of people was waiting. Initially, they began to charge the helicopters as they set down. But with the rotors still turning, Kanauka was able to motion for them to wait while he and Webb unloaded a supply of water bottles, military rations, and even diapers before taking off again. “It probably had been several days since those people had eaten,” he says.

Webb adds that they never knew the names of the many people whom their team rescued. But one thing about them sticks out in his memory: “I never saw a person I flew who had shoes on.”