♪♪ On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coastline.

Her winds pushed surge water toward New Orleans, a city that is mostly below sea level and depends on its levees for its protection.

The extreme floodwaters put pressure on those levees, and they breached.

♪♪ Approximately 85% of New Orleans was now underwater, and thousands of people were trapped.

Many were unable to evacuate and had to ride out the storm in their homes, boats, or designated shelters such as the Superdome.

The mix of hurricane winds and flooding devastated all infrastructure.

New Orleanians were becoming increasingly desperate for help.

City, state, and federal officials were unprepared for the scale of the disaster... but there was a ray of hope.

The United States Coast Guard was ready, and during those next few critical weeks following the storm, these men and women went on to save more than 30,000 lives, making it the single biggest search and rescue operation they had ever conducted.

♪♪ You know, there's an old saying in the Coast Guard, some might even call it the unwritten motto... when lives are at stake, no matter what the call, the book says, "You have to go out," but it doesn't say anything about coming back.

There may be no better depiction of this than the Coast Guard's response to Hurricane Katrina.

We now look back 20 years ago at the air crews that flew over the city of New Orleans during what was most assuredly one of the Coast Guard's finest hours.

♪♪ ♪♪ The most difficult task that I faced was more of a personal situation.

Uh...

When I came home-- Well, first off, my house was kinda destroyed during, during the hurricane, so I was living with, uh, my wife's first cousin, and I came back to that house, and my wife was a little upset, and I,idn't understand why she was upset, I was tired, I just wanted to go to sleep.

And, and I said, "What's wrong?"

And, and she told me that, uh, she was worried about her mom.

[exhales] You know, this is our business in the Coast Guard.

It's all about hurricane season and preparing for hurricanes.

[Capt.

Bruce Jones] That's why we're here.

That's why we serve.

And that's why we all joined the Coast Guard, was to save lives.

When Hurricane Katrina came along, that is what we had been training for for years.

And we were ready.

We were prepared.

Stepped up to the plate and, as a result, many thousands and thousands and thousands of lives were saved.

[David Callahan] We flew... [Callahan] ...hours that we had never flown before, at rates we'd never flown before, and conducted sky hoisting operations... ...in the numbers that folks will never see in their entire career.

[Capt.

Jones] All those Coast Guard men and women who came to New Orleans went above and beyond the call of duty.

You've been superb, you've been magnificent.

This is the greatest, sustained, intense, most successful rescue operation in Coast Guard history.

♪♪ [Capt.

Jones] In the summer of 2005, we'd already had several hurricanes enter the Gulf of Mexico.

The difference with Hurricane Katrina was once we had about 48 hours prior to landfall, it was clear that we were gonna have a probable Cat 5 hurricane strike very close to, if not directly on, the city of New Orleans.

We knew this was gonna be a big one, and our main concern really was, was our air station gonna be destroyed.

We wanted to be able to immediately do rescue operations following the storm.

We decided the safest place to evacuate would be to the west, just beyond the storm winds', uh, reach.

We sent two helicopters to Houston, three helicopters to Lake Charles shortly before the hurricane made landfall.

♪♪ Immediately after the storm made landfall, we determined that we could probably get safely over the city by about 4:00 p.m. We all took off and flew to Houma, Louisiana.

It was about 60 to 65 knots of wind still, so we couldn't go any further.

[Laurence Nettles] I spent several hours there waiting for the hurricane.

I had a small green football.

I remember playing football on the, on the field, uh, next to the helicopters with the other crew members.

[Capt.

Jones] We were able to communicate with, uh, the Eighth District Air Operations Branch, and we simply told them that we were gonna execute the plan we had discussed over thevious several days, and that plan was to first land at our airfield, make sure that the airfield's usable, and then begin assessing damage and doing rescue operations as necessary.

[Nettles] And I remember Captain Jones pulling us all together and saying, "Alright, this is it.

"The hurricane's above the city right now.

"We're gonna go ahead and come down south and follow the hurricane up."

[Capt.

Jones] So we dispatched, uh, two helicopters to go south, southeast to Grand Isle and work their way up, uh, the Mississippi River while the rest of us flew back to New Orleans.

[Capt.

Jones] Three generations of women from a family, they were trapped on this boat and, and needed help.

So then that was the first rescue after Katrina had made landfall.

[Capt.

Jones] As soon as we landed at the air station, we at least determined that our fuel truck was still there.

The air station wasn't flooded, although it had sustained heavy damage, so we knew we'd be able to operate at least for a short perif time.

My helicopter flew north over the 17th Street, uh, Canal area.

At that point, it was about 4:30 p.m. and we actually saw the levee had been breached and water was pouring into the, the city.

[Nettles] The first thing I saw was a school underwater.

And just seeing debris... boats, corpses floating.

I, I couldn't believe that that much damage could happen just from a storm.

♪♪ [Coast Guard] Swimmer's going down.

Survivors getting in the basket.

Hold your position.

We are taking the load.

Basket is coming up.

Moving the basket in the cabin.

[Capt.

Jones] You could quickly tell that there was gonna be massive destruction, that there were gonna be probably thousands of people that needed to be rescued.

And then, long term, you know, we, we had already thought about the fact that if the city of New Orleans ever floods, the water sits there for probably 30 days before it can all get pumped out.

That means all of the infrastructure's gonna be destroyed.

Your gas lines and power lines and all the things that make a city run are gonna be, uh, significantly damaged.

It'll be months or years to get repaired.

So we knew this was a huge disaster, but the immediate need, of course, was just to rescue people and they quickly became apparent on rooftops waving for help.

[Robert Williams] The Hurricane Katrina response was different in almost every aspect of the rescue, everything that you try to stay away from as an air crew.

Power lines and active fires.

And it's just everything that, that can kill you.

We're used to doing rescue operations offshore.

We train for maritime rescue operations.

We pull people out of 25-foot seas, not off of balconies or rooftops or through windows.

[Williams] We had to pull, you know, a bunch of families off of a balcony that was surrounded by power lines.

And so, the pilot, you know, he brings his plane down into just, like, uh, the, the closest confined areas.

There's just not a lot of room for error there.

And I'm hanging on the hook already, you know, and I'm just watching this like... "This, man, this is wrong on so many levels, but it's also pretty cool."

You know, Katrina changed the Coast Guard.

It was forbidden to put more than one person in a basket at a time.

Well, during Katrina, we were shoving four people in there.

That basket holds 600 pounds, so if it was less than 600 pounds, they were going in the basket.

There aren't manuals written for every situation.

[Sara Faulkner] I mean, I never had to straddle a balcony before.

I was, like, swinging into the building.

That was the most nerve-racking thing I ever did.

[Joel Sayers] One of my most memorable recoveries.

It was a couple.

They are stuck in their attic.

Uh, they were able to punch a small hole, and the wife was able to kinda wiggle her way out.

I got to the house, she explained to me that her husband was still stuck inside and that he was unable to walk.

So, looked at the hole, realized that I could not get him out.

I decided to ask her to borrow a shirt, and I marked the house with a, uh, blouse that she had on.

We hoisted her out and I promised her I would go back to get her husband.

We noticed a couple of fire trucks.

We landed near them.

We disembarked all the survivors we had on board, and I walked over to the fire truck and just asked if I could borrow an ax, uh, and they gave me an ax and a gas-powered saw.

We went back to the area we were working and they lowered me down, talked to the gentleman inside, had to move out of the way and I was able to cut a hole large enough, uh, to fit him through, and he moved his way over, and with his help, we were able to pull him through and, and bring him up onto the roof.

I had never had to cut a hole in a house before.

Uh, honestly, if you'd've asked me, I would've laughed at you to say that I ever would have to.

But I think that's kind of part of that learning, how to use our tools in a different manner and using what's around you.

[Nettles] And that's one of the reasons why the Coast Guard was so incredibly successful during Katrina is because we are taught to solve problems, to think outside the box.

[Capt.

Jones] We saw what needed to be done and we figured out how to do it.

Our rescue swimmers are very, uh, dynamic and highly qualified individuals.

I had a rescue swimmer, uh, wading through, uh, neck-deep water to get into a home to, to rescue people.

And, uh, of course, the water is full of every chemical that was in anyone's house and any cars.

[Nettles] There were thousands, if not millions of different kind of c-chemicals, that I'm very certain are not healthy for me, in the water.

[Capt.

Jones] We had gasoline and diesel and oil and sewage and household chemicals all mixed together in the 95-degree Louisiana heat.

[Nettles] I had chemical burns over my entire body from several of the cases that I had.

They had medical teams coming down and injecting as much antibiotics as they could in us while we were still able to do our jobs and all that other fun stuff.

I will never forget the infected cuts all over my legs and my arms, um, just from being in that water.

[Capt.

Jones] It was a pretty nasty, uh, unsafe, unhealthy mess.

But there are people to be rescued, and so our crews did whatever they needed to do to, to rescue people.

The challenges of flying at night, uh, during Hurricane Katrina rescue operations were there was no lighting in the city.

So we were relying on our local area knowledge and night vision goggles and our search lights to ensure that the crews were safe.

[Chris Chase] We were probably about 10 miles away from the heart of where things were going wrong, and we, we made a radio call and said, "Hey, this is Coast Guard 6-5, whatever.

We're inbound, where should we go?"

And one of my friends came back and said, "Just follow the flashlights, man."

And sure enough, we got a little closer, and there was-- it was like spotlights everywhere.

People flashlights and they were just shining them into the sky.

I remember pulling people, uh, uh, out, out of some homes just east of the 17th Street, uh, Canal, and there was a radio tower behind us, and I had to keep asking my flight mechanic to, for a tail rotor clearance, because in order to get over the house, we had to get pretty near the, the tower.

You knew there were power lines and towers and tall buildings, and there was no illumination.

And so, that was the big challenge we had flying at night.

Since we were familiar with the area and had night vision goggles, we did do, uh, night operations every night until the last person was rescued.

♪♪ We easily had well over 100 helicopters from the Coast Guard, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force all operating out there, and there was no air traffic control.

[Williams] Hundreds and hundreds of aircraft flying around... you know, maybe 100 feet away from you.

[Chase] We flew within meters of each other, two helicopters working at the same building, picking people up at the same time.

And according to the FAA, that's a serious near midair collision.

[Lt. Greg Houghton] We almost hit another aircraft.

I didn't even see the guy.

He was coming from the left side, I was in the right seat.

My flight mech, uh, Petty Officer Don Rogers, I mean, he s-- He literally saved everybody's life.

All he did was yell, "Hard right now."

And I, I lay that helicopter over, and, I mean-- It was so bad that I'm, I'm in it, and I remember holding it and I was like, "Can I roll out?

Can I roll out?"

He's like, "No, I don't know where he's at now.

Just keep turning.

Keep turning."

And then I looked out the chin bubble.

And that guy, I mean, a news chopper, probably about 200 feet from us, and we, we almost bit it.

[Capt.

Jones] Air traffic control, by design, is intended to keep aircraft apart from each other, and the whole purpose of the rescue operations there was to get as many helicopters in there as possible, saturate the city with helicopters, because time was very critical.

♪♪ It was very life-threatening conditions for survivors, so we wanted to rescue as many as possible.

We developed some local course rules which we would pass on informally to crews as they arrived in New Orleans.

So, we asked people to stay at certain altitudes, and we also had Department of Defense aircraft up at very high altitude, which those aircraft, their mission is air traffic control.

The fact that our crews managed to affect all those rescues without a single significant injury and no aircraft mishap is astounding.

But the reason it worked is that, you know, Coast Guard crews we're, we're tight.

♪♪ [Callahan] It's not just the pilots, it's the, the flight mechanics and the rescue swimmers.

They're all in it together.

There's no tighter team than a helicopter rescue team.

[Capt.

Jones] One of the keys to the Coast Guard's success in the Hurricane Katrina response is that our crews train the same way, standardization.

[Williams] And so that anybody can work with anybody, anywhere, at any time.

You know, we might be put in a situation where we might be the difference between someone living and dying.

[Callahan] And we pulled together crews from all over the Coast Guard and threw them into the missions, arguably some of the most demanding and stressful missions that we'd ever seen.

[Capt.

Jones] We were able to bring in crews from around the country, East coast, West coast, Gulf Coast, Great Lakes.

Pretty much went from helicopter to helicopter to helicopter.

[Sayers] I can go from one helicopter to another helicopter, one crew that I know well, another crew that I may not know very well at all.

[Nettles] I would literally introduce myself to my pilots, my flight mech.

"Uh, where you guys from?

Where you from?

Where you from?"

We would shake hands and say, "Hi, I'm Chris, I'm Bob, I'm Dave."

"Well, let's get out of here and let's go save some lives."

[Capt.

Jones] I don't know any other military service that takes different people from different units and puts 'em on the same aircraft for the first time ever to do rescue missions, and that enabled quite a bit of our success.

When they were rescuing, uh, from rooftops of large buildings where there were multiple folks, you know, big groups of people... [Callahan] ...one of the challenges our rescue swimmers had was maintaining order on those rooftops.

And I remember that we started getting reports of folks making threatening gestures towards our rescue swimmers.

That's not normal for a Coast Guard rescuer.

You know, we-we usually don't have to defend ourselves.

A rescue swimmer had landed with his crew and he was pissed off.

He's like, "Man, those people tried to kill me.

They tried to stab me."

And I was like, "Whoa, man, where was that at?"

He's like, "Some, some hotels, like the Days Inn omething."

And I'm like, "Why were they trying to stab you?"

He was like, "Man, there's 150 of 'em.

I couldn't, I couldn't take 'em all."

I'm, I'm not from, like, a great area, and so, I'm-- I felt like I, I could communicate and, uh, I understood, you know, who I was going to rescue.

So, I told my pilots, you know, Days Inn, a lot of people there would need to be rescued.

And I didn't tell them, you know, the severity of the situation.

So, we get on scene and everybody, just, like, as soon as the helicopter started hovering over the rooftop, people started coming out of every, like, every doorway.

You know, you'd be surprised how many doors are on top of a roof of the hotel.

So, they lowered me down, and the second I touched down, it was just a crowd of people around me.

There was no breathing room.

In that crowd were people with weapons whose families were not there anymore, they'd have been rescued two days before, and they just wanted to leave.

But I didn't know that at the time.

So, they pulled knives out and they're like, "Hey, man, we're going first."

And I said, "Well, actually, you're not going first, women and children are," you know, and, and that's what I was trained to say.

You know, I mean, I, I was scared, but I, I, I also knew that it would be more scary if I completely lost control.

I got their knives, I threw 'em over the side and I made sure to not hoist those guys first, because I didn't want other people thinking they could threaten me and get off the rooftop.

So I sent three families up in the basket before them.

Those guys were still-- They were making everybody nervous, so I knew that I was gonna send 'em pretty soon.

But during the course of, of waiting for a helicopter to send 'em up on, I got to talk to 'em, you know, and they're like, "Look, dude, I, I miss my wife, man.

"I don't know, I don't know if she's okay, you know?

"I wasn't trying to hurt you.

I just want to see my wife."

So we kinda connected on that level, and I... It-It changed my mode of thinking for the entire rest of the, you know, period I was, I was there at Katrina.

When you pull the women and children off, you may not be coming back to that rooftop.

So, there were families that were separated, you know, for three, even four days at a time.

♪♪ [Faulkner] When we had our, our load full, when we landed, this woman came up to me and she said... [voice breaking] that her son was, like, 16.

He's mentally, uh, handicapped.

And he was in that water.

I had his whole family.

I had his mom, dad, little sister, baby brother, and he's-- I left him behind.

And so, I took her by her wrists and said, "We're going back, and I'm getting your son."

Well, I thought we're going back, and then, all of a sudden, we land at the air station in New Orleans, and we were there for a couple hours because they thought-- and hel-- a helicopter had crashed, and, uh, you know, it had to go through several levels of, you know, approval for everybody to get back up and flying.

So as we're going back to the plane, the pilot in command was saying, there's this guy on top of a parking structure, he's not gonna make it if we don't get him.

We gotta pick this guy up and take him to the hospital.

And I said, "No, we can't."

I said, "We can't."

I left a teenage mentally handicapped boy in... sewage water up to his neck by himself.

So, we finish up getting that whole crew, we get him in the plane.

When we open the door and let everybody out, I see the mom and she's there, and I, I, like, pointed to her... You know, they're so happy and so relieved to be out of whatever.

And just to see that relief on their faces and, you know, and they're like, telling me, "Thank you, thank you."

And I'm like, "No, thank you."

Like, this... You know, "Thank you for waiting."

You know, "I'm sorry we took so long.

Thank you for still being here."

When humanity is on the line, it's not even a thought that you think of.

Everybody just went and did as much as they could for as long as they could.

[Capt.

Jones] On the fourth day, I did get in a helicopter again to go do some search and rescue.

Flith, uh, Lieutenant Craig Murray.

We found an area which had not been flooded a few days before near the Superdome, which was now flooded.

It was an apartment complex, and on the roof there were a large number of people gathered, and we put the rescue swimmer down to see what, what they needed, and the rescue swimmer triaged the survivors to figure out who we could take in our helicopter.

And, all of a sudden, I s-- I heard this cat screaming, just rah, rah, a cat screaming.

And I said to Craig on the intercom, I said, "Jeez, do you hear that cat screaming?"

And he-he looked in the back and he said, "Those are kids.

Those are kids screaming."

It was just, "Wow."

I remember we got back from that flight and he said, "Man, I think I'm done for today.

That's just, that was just too much."

The first few days was the hardest.

[Sayers] One of the most difficult things that we dealt with were the returning crews.

You had crews from all over the country that were hoisting together, comingk, and everybody had a different experience.

Some had very good experiences where people were very, very happy and some had dealt with things that... unfortunately, were, were a little bit more on the sad side.

[Capt.

Jones] Some of our rescue swimmers had been inside nursing homes full of, uh, deceased elderly patients.

[Sayers] Uh, it was kind of a...

It was a roller coaster of emotion, I guess is the best way to describe it.

[Capt.

Jones] So, it was very emotional for many of our crews.

And, uh, it was very difficult coming to work every day for some of our people.

[Nettles] I would lay down, close my eyes, try to get a few hours of sleep, and unfortunately, I couldn't sleep because all I saw were rooftops.

Whenever I closed my eyes, it was, it was very haunting, it was just weird.

I think it's...

I think we all suffered from it one way or another.

You know, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And from the E-1 on up through the top, most senior people here, everybody did their part and then they did somebody else's part too.

I've never seen anything like it.

And I know none of you have and, and none of us ever will again.

You've been superb, you've been magnificent.

This was the greatest, sustained, intense, most successful rescue operation in Coast Guard history.

♪♪ All I can say is, God bless all of you, and thanks for being here.

[cheering and whooping] [Sayers] I think we have some of the most talented men and women in the world.

[coast guard 1] U.S. Coast Guard.

U.S. Coast Guard.

[Coast Guard 2] ...this is Coast Guard Sector Miami, over.

What is your position?

[Sayers] I think we have some of the best pilots... [Sayers] ...I think we have some of the best flight mechanics... [Sayers] ...the surface fleet, those who run our ships, those who drive our boats, those who support us from the ground.

Can you move your arms and your legs?

You can't walk.

Okay.

[Sayers] Nothing in Hurricane Katrina worked because of one group.

[speaker] Thank you, guys.

[Sayers] The only reason that we were as successful as we were is because every entity within the Coast Guard worked well together.

But again, the planes only move if they have the support.

The people only work if they have people supporting them.

So, from top to bottom, whether it's sitting behind a desk or it's working in a galley or it's communications... or it's flying or it's driving that boat... without any of those entities, none of this would've been possible.

♪♪ [inaudible] ♪♪ [Glenn Morshower] The Coast Guard's response to Hurricane Katrina was unprecedented.

For a service that usually rescued one or two people at a time, they were now saving more than a thousand lives per day, and sadly, due to the overwhelming number of people in need, they were simply unable to catalog or record the names.

So, we leave you tonight with the faces of the survivors, who are only here today because the Coast Guard took immediate action.

Thank you for watching.

I'm Glenn Morshower.

Good night.

♪♪ ♪♪