A PJ’s night in New Orleans

JACKSON, Miss. (AFPN) -- At the heart of the helicopter rescue portion of the Air Force Reserve Command’s contribution to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort are the crews flying 10 to 12 hour missions picking up as many as 184 survivors on a single mission.

At the very center of that heart pararescuemen can be found who have risked life and limb so that others may live.

Tethered by safety harnesses in the back of HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, the PJs, as they are more commonly referred to, have a truly unique perspective of the devastation, especially on the human part of the equation, wrought by the category four hurricane.

For one pararescueman from AFRC’s 304th Rescue Squadron, it was more than an eye-opening experience.

“My first flight into New Orleans was at nighttime,” said Tech. Sgt. Keith Berry, who is based in Portland, Ore. “I got here on Sept. 1, and they sent me out the following night.”

Equipped with a night-vision monocle attached to his helmet, Sergeant Berry’s view of the ground at night is a garish, greenish version of what was visible in the daylight; with his unaided eye, it is inky blackness.

Typically, pararescuemen and their crews come from the same unit; however, the rescue effort for Hurricane Katrina blended active-duty and guardsmen with the reservists on each flight.

Sitting in the helicopter’s doorway opposite Sergeant Berry was Tech. Sgt. Isaiah Staley, a reservist from the 306th Rescue Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

Heading south from here, the helicopter passed over dozens of communities blacked out by massive power failures. Besides the power outages, the first indications of the storm’s passage were the wind-felled trees, all of them toppled toward the west, bowed to Katrina’s fury.

Structural damage to the buildings below soon became more evident and more severe. As they approached communities along the Gulf of Mexico, there was total devastation.

Passing over islands where homes once stood, all that remained were the upright columns that once supported them. Across the bay, on the shoreline along the mainland, were what is left of those homes -- huge rafts of debris clogging every stream and inlet feeding the Gulf.

As Sergeant Berry’s helicopter passed over Lake Pontchartrain, the scene that greeted him over New Orleans was like one from another world.

“It was like one of those ‘War of the Worlds’ type movies,” he said. “Through my (night-vision) monocle, I could see other helicopters flying at 600 to 1,000 feet with their (infrared) lights on.

“From each helicopter you could see this big cone of light pointing down at the ground and all over you could see (them),” he said. “They looked like monopods trolling around everywhere you looked. You could see them coming in to hover, and you could see people being hoisted up under them.”

Flames from a large fire in an industrial area flared in his night-vision device, and he could see a couple of buildings here and there that were evidently operating on generator power.

“We started to fly a grid pattern over one of the blackened areas where you could see water in the streets,” Sergeant Berry said. “Then we saw a flashlight below. We swung around, came into hover and we saw it again.”

Sergeants Berry and Staley climbed into their strops, horse collar-like devices used to raise and lower pararescuemen on the hoist, and they descended into the surreal darkness of the flooded city.

Alighting onto a roof, they removed the strops and scampered along the roof line to the edge. The helicopter flew away and orbited in the distance to allow the two Airmen to be able to hear any calls for help. Sergeant Berry lay down on the roof and looked over the side to see who was below.

“I shouted out, ‘We’re from the United States Air Force and we’re here to rescue you. Do you need to leave?’” he said.

The response was not what he expected when the man indicated that he did not and that he was OK.

“I thought to myself that this was not getting off to the best start,” Sergeant Berry said. “It was like, ‘I’m here to rescue you,’ and he didn’t want to go.”

After determining the man had enough food and water, he had no medical problems and there was no one else there to be rescued, the helicopter returned to retrieve the two pararescuemen.

It was a scene that was repeated at the next stop, but after leaving they saw a flashlight signaling them from a couple on the grassy median of a flooded street. There, several people were hoisted to the helicopter, and when it was full it headed to the airport and left the two Airmen to wait for its return with the group of flood survivors.

In the darkness they could see some lights on in a nearby apartment building with a large, flat roof and they learned it had a working elevator. They decided to move the group to the roof of the apartment building for evacuation rather than risk bringing people up through the spider web of power lines and tree branches over the street.

“The lines weren’t energized,” Sergeant Berry said. “There were just a lot of them.”

In the apartment building, the small band of survivors from the ground was joined by others from the inside. Individuals and families made their way to the roof to await rescue. The L-shaped building’s rooftop was large enough to accommodate two hovering helicopters, and soon other Pave Hawks swooped in to retrieve the beleaguered residents.

“We loaded four or five loads of people off the roof of that building,” Sergeant Berry said. “There was just a bunch of people up there and I think only one of those loads was on to our helicopter.”

The rescues were repeated throughout the night as the Airmen assisted load after load of people into the helicopter and on to the airport.

“We’d go, hoist down and grab; go, hoist down and grab,” Sergeant Berry said. “The really neat thing is that almost everybody we met had been doing things to help each other. You had neighbors who were concerned about the neighbor from across the street. To me that’s the most compelling thing of the whole situation.”

Many times the pararescuemen were left behind as their heavily laden helicopter departed for the airport. When their helicopter was gone, they waded through the streets going from house to house.

“As long as we stayed in the middle of the street it was waist deep to chest deep,” Sergeant Berry said. “You try not to think about what was in the water, but I do remember joking with Isaiah as we waded along saying, ‘Did you just see a set of alligator eyes go underwater over there?’ He may not have thought it was very funny but I got a kick out of it.”

Often they encountered individuals who, while not wanting to be rescued themselves, knew of neighbors who should be checked on. At one house, they were told of a nearby school that served as a shelter for a number of people, including families. As they made their way toward the school, they gathered a small crowd of survivors collected from houses they passed along the way.

At the school, which had been barricaded against the looting and crime, they found a highly organized and well-supplied colony of families and individuals determined to make a go of it despite the situation.

The apparent leader of the group, a former servicemember named Allen, had organized search parties that had gone around the neighborhood during the day checking on people and bringing those that would come, back to the school.

“At this point, it was still dark but the sky was just starting to lighten,” Sergeant Berry said. “We were wading through the chest-deep water that had a little sheen of oil on it. It was totally quiet and you could see that it was really a neat old neighborhood. I remember thinking, ‘Boy, this is sure a weird way to tour New Orleans.’”

Sergeant Berry had high praise for the airmanship of the Pave Hawk crew and their ability to get the pararescuemen where they needed to be.

The efforts of Sergeant Berry, as well as those of about 400 of his fellow Airmen directly involved in the operation and support of the Air Force’s helicopter rescue mission, have paid off. More than 4,200 lives have been saved during 12 days of 24 hour-a-day operations, with Air Force Reserve helicopters accounting for 1,043 of those saves.

Back at the helicopter’s temporary home base after Sergeant Berry’s first night mission, he reflected upon a moment from that night as especially gratifying. It seemed to encapsulate all of his experiences.

“We came upon a house with five women and two little children living in it,” Sergeant Berry said. “Rescuing the children was one of the most satisfying things that I have ever done. I put the strop on, gathered these kids in to me and got my arms around both of them. By this time, it was dawn and you could see this big column of smoke hanging over the city. Then I looked down at these two beautiful kids in my arms as we were hoisted into the helicopter and I remember thinking, ‘Man, this is a fulfilling job.’”