JTAC Airman brings target strike experience to hurricane response

  • Published
  • By Capt. Nicholas J. Sabula
  • Air Force News Agency
CAMERON PARISH, La. (AFPN) --  Senior Airman Gabe Bird is no stranger to desolate locales, whether serving down range or in storm-torn areas of Louisiana. The difference between the two is that one of them is his home state.

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, Airman Bird, a Louisiana Air National Guard joint tactical air controller, lost everything. His home in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans, was destroyed. The rest of his parish fared no better, a 25-foot storm surge hammered levees, leaving nearly 15 feet of standing water in most areas and transformed his community into a watery grave. Almost every structure in the area was either damaged or destroyed by the storm.

Fast-forward almost three years to the day after Katrina changed his life, another storm has arrived to wreak havoc on his home state. While the storm was headed for the Texas coast, Louisiana would once again be hit as well.

Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm with winds of 110 mph, slammed into the Gulf Coast in the early morning hours of Sept. 13, sending a torrent of wind and water back to parishes. The eastern bands of the storm had a large effect on parishes in the area, causing major flooding across the state.

After Hurricane Ike made landfall, responders gathered at the Calcasieu Parish Sherriff's office to coordinate their recovery operation plans for portions of southwestern Louisiana. With access to the area still cut off from normal routes because of massive flooding, authorities had to postpone any work for a few days.

Cameron Parish Sherriff Theos Duhon had no way of communicating with different areas of the parish. Phone lines, cellular towers and electricity were no longer in service. The Louisiana Air National Guard's 122nd Air Support Operations Squadron at Camp Beauregard, La., would receive the call to action. Members would assist local authorities to communicate where there was no other way.

Airman Bird knows the importance of getting critical communication to the right people. As a JTAC, the ability to conduct his mission in a chaotic environment can mean life or death for people relying on him.

"We request, coordinate, and control air strikes for ground forces, whether it's Army, Marines, or special forces," he said. "JTAC is what the Army knows us by."

From forward positions, JTACs use processes that are well-coordinated and have tremendously-detailed communication channels for close-air-support missions, communicating with aircraft and telling a pilot where to bomb the enemy. JTACs are members of the tactical air control party career field who are qualified to control an air strike on the ground.

Because JTACs spend most of their career assigned to Army units, tactical controllers can most often be found embedded with special operations forces.

He recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan in June, where he worked with the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade.

"We controlled 120 air strikes in the four and a half months we were there," he said. "We brought a lot of bad days to the bad guys."

Back in Louisiana, his enemy is lack of information. He was dispatched to the parish for a reason: Take skills he used to attack Taliban forces in Afghanistan and help people with Hurricane Ike recovery efforts in his home state.

"We're going to provide real-time communications through our tactical satellite radios back to the EOC element," Airman Bird said.

The emergency operations centers Airman Bird is talking about are response centers setup to coordinate relief efforts throughout the state.

"With all communications down in Cameron, the only way to communicate is through a satellite radio, which we provide," he said.

In Cameron, responders normally would communicate on their handheld radios back and forth, with the tower serving as a repeater link.

"Since all the towers are down, the cell phones are down; they can't talk. That's where we come in. we'll provide the tactical satellite communications; when we go forward with the assessment team we'll report the damage back to the EOC.

His team moved forward throughout the parish into the affected areas where damage was unknown.

"By the looks of things logistically, the eastern part of the parish has fared better, since a lot of the rebuilt stuff is still there," Sherriff Duhon said. As you go to the west things progressively start to deteriorate. Right now we don't know what's out there."

It may seem hard to go from a combat role to a humanitarian role, but Airman Bird says it's not that difficult. 

"You go from aggressive, dropping bombs on the enemy to actually rescuing people," he said. "Big difference, but we can make the switch pretty easy." 

He says one thing that makes all the devastation easier to cope with is what JTACs deal with downrange. 

"In combat you have more of an aggressive mindset, it's still a stressful situation," he said. "With this, you turn off the aggressiveness and now you're just trying to help in any way necessary, but you still have to think outside the box because we do a lot of things that may not be in our specific job details. Our stress level in combat prepares us to deal with this a lot easier."

Airman Bird adds the people he's here to help are going through a lot.

"It's probably more stressful for people whose homes got destroyed," he said.

He said that he knows exactly what the people he's helping are going through and knows any little assistance he can provide can go a long way toward getting people back on their feet.

"You can relate to it because you've seen it; before, you've been through it," he said. "You kind of know how they feel. It hits home a little more, and you can relate to the people a little better. It's not just outsiders, it's like 'I've been through this too' so it helps you connect with them."

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