Airmen pitch in for New Orleans cleanup

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Bryan Bouchard
  • 4th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
NEW ORLEANS (AFPN) --  After living at the New Orleans airport for 10 days while building three tent cities, Air Force civil engineers headed downtown Sept. 13 to help clean up Hurricane Katrina wreckage.

“It’s great (the engineers) can get out and help these people directly,” said Capt. Paul Fredin, who is assigned to the 4th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here and deployed from McGuire Air Force Base, N.J.

Armed with more than a dozen chain saws, about 100 Airmen headed out on buses for the cleanup effort, not knowing what to expect or in what conditions they would be working, but glad for the opportunity to assist.

“It’s good to help out,” said Staff Sgt. Jason Kaluza, who is deployed from Scott AFB, Ill. “It’s great to help out other Americans.”

While one group of Airmen went into a neighborhood in downtown New Orleans to clean up debris, another group went to a town called Algiers on the outskirts of the city. There the team found downed trees and debris littering the roadways. With chain saws roaring, the crews started making sense of the mess covering the streets.

Meanwhile, a two-man team from McGuire found something they didn’t expect -- a blown water line. Soldiers on scene from the 82nd Airborne Division asked the group if they had anyone who could help with the line, and Staff Sgts. Jonathan Close and Nicholas Fink stepped up as the group’s resident plumbers to see if they could repair the water main. Soldiers had located the water meter, but not the shutoff valve.

The two Airmen made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to dig their way through a foot of sludge to find a shutoff valve. Then they decided to recheck the meter themselves to see if there was a way to turn it off. After digging in the mud, Sergeant Close was able to unearth the valve, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. As soon as they uncovered the valve, they discovered they needed a valve key from the utility company to shut the water off.

Thinking quickly, the two fashioned a valve key from a discarded aluminum fence post and were able to shut off the water, preventing the already soupy yard from spreading down the street.

After their wet start, however, the team spent the rest of the hot and humid day chopping up downed trees and gathering limbs for municipal cleanup crews to discard later.

For most of the engineers, the opportunity to help local residents was a welcomed break from setting up the tent cities. For others it was a taste of the harsh reality of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Senior Airman Richard Davis, a firefighter from Shaw AFB, S.C., enlisted in the Air Force three-and-a-half years ago and flew to basic training from the New Orleans airport he now calls home. As a former resident of Slidell, La., he said it was weird noting places he once delivered food to for a local distributor that are now nonexistent.

“The house that I lived in is probably gone,” he said.

For Airman Davis, there was no question about wanting to deploy here to help, and many on his team stepped forward as well.

“A bunch of the guys volunteered for this deployment before the hurricane even hit,” said Airman Davis, whose parents now live in Jackson, Miss.