u.s. coast guard oral history program - bmcs steven noyes

8/8/2019 U.S. Coast Guard Oral History Program - BMCS Steven Noyes

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U.S. Coast Guard Oral History Program

Katrina Archival & Historical Record Team (KART)

Hurricane Katrina, 2005

Interviewee: BMCS Steven Noyes, USCG

Officer-in-Charge, ANT Dulac

Interviewer: PA3 Susan Blake, USCGRDate of Interview: 17 October 2005

Place: ANT Dulac, Louisiana

Abstract:

BMCS Noyes was part on the nine-vessel flotilla that entered New Orleans on August 30. He rodein on the 55119. Noyes encountered an eerie sight: an entire city in absolute darkness. Thatevening, Noyes 55119 crew and a crew from a 41-footer climbed up the canal street ferry landingand walked to Harrahs, where the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) had set up their

command post. They let the NOPD know that they were in New Orleans and to report that therewere people in the nearby Hilton Hotel flashing lights from windows. Noyes was concerned thatthey needed help. The NOPD said that these people were fine. The NOPD had everything exceptcommunications and they were isolated by the floodwaters. About 1:30 am, the Navy asked theCoast Guard to help rescue people from the east bank. They had to wait for the Navy to receivepermission before they could start evacuating people. Soon after, Black Hawk helicopters arrivedwith Marines. They began to move people to the west bank. They rescued 120 people early thatmorning. However, they awoke to complaints that the Coast Guard had dumped the evacuees offon the west bank and left them there. The Coast Guard later cleared this up. By Wednesdaymorning, many of the ferries had arrived. Two 55s and seven 41s went over to the Chalmette ferry

landing. It became too difficult to remove the evacuees with their boats, so they used a floatingdock and the ferries to evacuate larger numbers at once. They also used a tugboat and a barge toevacuate people, while the 41s provided safety escorts. Many of the evacuees were barefoot andhad cuts and scrapes; others were in need of insulin. They tried to keep families together but assoon as the Coast Guard made that announcement, everybody became somebody elsesfamily. Noyes said that the people of St. Bernards parish are a hardy stock and would not becausing trouble. Some evacuees were being pushed in office chairs. Another woman donated herwheelchair to others after she was rescued. After the first day in Chalmette they had to pull boatcrews to perform security duties. For Noyes, the biggest challenge was keeping the crewsfocused.

8/31/2010 Katrina Oral History: BMCS Steven Noyes

uscg.mil//NoyesStevenoralhistory.asp 1/15


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Q: Alright, could you please state your first name, your last name and spell your last name out.

BMCS Noyes: Its Steven Noyes; N-O-Y-E-S.

Q: Okay, and your rate is?

BMCS Noyes: BMCS.

Q: Okay. How long have you been in the Coast Guard?

BMCS Noyes: Twenty-five-and-a-half years.

Q: Okay. Can you briefly tell us your career path that led to you being stationed here at Dulac?

BMCS Noyes: I started out on the Coast Guard cutter Yocona in 1980 in Astoria, Oregon. I wentto QM A School from there and from there as a third class a SAR controller at Group NewOrleans. I then went down to the Coast Guard cutter White Holly where I started my ATON careerin 1981. From the White Holly I went to the Pamlico 20 feet up the pier, did three years on thePamlico , a construction tender, then went to the Coast Guard cutter Port Harris in HonoluluHawaii; two years there. I then established the QM billet at Air Station Clearwater and thensuccessfully completed that tour and then went back to Hawaii as a second class - I stayed thirdclass for a long time but as a second class at the D14 OAN staff. And from there I made firstclass and went to the Coast Guard cutter White Pine in Mobile Alabama. I decommissioned theWhite Pine after four years, turned it over to the Dominican Republic and commissioned theCoast Guard cutter Barbara Mabrity and brought it back to Mobile from Wisconsin. I made Chief

off of it and then back to Group New Orleans as the Command Center Supervisor, and then thegreat merger happened and I became a Boatswains Mate and took over the RFO job as theReadiness Division Chief at Group New Orleans. I made Senior Chief there. I sat through theOfficer-in-Charge of Review board. I got my ANT Afloat Certification. This job came open andthey needed somebody with a certification to fill it so I was offered this opportunity and became thefirst ex-quartermaster to receive a shore ATON command in the Coast Guard.

Q: Alright. Now just prior to Katrina blowing into the Gulf area, what were you doing; what kind ofpreparations were you doing here at Dulac?

BMCS Noyes: Well we had just finished responding to Tropical Storm Cindy, which after Cindywe spent three and a half straight days, 18 hour days, working to restore the aids to navigation inCat Island Pass and Bell Pass which goes into Fourchon, which is one of the major oil ports, youknow supply boat ports coming out of the Gulf. And then Hurricane Dennis came along and weevaded once again and we were starting to clean up after Hurricane Dennis, which really didntaffect us because it was farther off to the east. And the Thursday before Katrina crossed thepeninsula of Florida we had just come back from a run down in Cat Island Pass and I walked backinto my office and I sat down and I turned on the weather channel, and I just had a feeling, That onewas in the same place Andrew was. So I came out and I told the guys, Okay, by about nextweekend were going to have us a hurricane. So we started making preparations; looking at

evacuation points and boxing up our supplies and stuff like that. We took some time off because




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we knew that it was going to be a long row to hoe after that and then we waited for stuff to happen.

Q: Okay. Now where did you end up evacuating to?

BMCS Noyes: We took a three-prong approach to our evacuation. Myself and a BM3, an MK1and a fireman evaded to Baton Rouge with the rest of the Coast Guard assets I left a BM3 and anMK3 behind to ferry the skiff; our 18-foot skiff up to Baton Rouge so wed have a governmentvehicle available to us, and then a BM1 and a Fireman were left here at the unit at Houma; at herhouse in Houma, to man the TANB; the 21-foot boat, in case there was a response needed hereon the backside of the storm or in case the storm came this way. So the 55 was with the boatflotilla, the 18 was also with us, and then the TANB and the other government vehicle were here.

Q: Now you ended up being a part of the flotilla that went over there.

BMCS Noyes: Yes.

Q: Can you tell us what happened with that; what were the events?

BMCS Noyes: Well we were the last vessel to make it through the railroad bridge in Morgan Cityon Sunday before the storm, as we were evading. We left here and then went to Houma to try totake fuel just to top off and there would have been a three-hour wait in Houma. We ended up takingfuel in Morgan City and heading up to Morgan City/Port Allen; the alternate route into theMississippi river at Port Allen Baton Rouge where we caught up with . . . we got out into the riverabout the same time that the Pamlico , the Clamp , the other two 55-footers in Group New OrleansAOR; the 55108 and the 55114, and the eight 41-footers; seven operational and one dead boat,were arriving at Baton Rouge. So we went down and everybody topped off with fuel at Stone Fuelthere and we went on up to a place right above the Highway 190 bridge close to Southern

University up there called The Baton Rouge Harbors; also known as Devils Swamp. Its anevasion place that we had spotted while doing RFOs on MSU Baton Rouge at the Group level andit had been used in the past. You know 20 years ago when I was here it was used but then it hadgone out and now it was coming back.

Anyway, so just after dark the Clamp went in first and spudded down and some of the 41s camealongside the Clamp . And then the Pamlico came in and spudded down - they were nose to nose- and then everybody else filled in around them and we sat there and we tracked the progress ofthe storm and immediately started brainstorming. In between, CWO Dave Lewald; the CO of thePamlico , BMC Brad Vandiver of ANT Venice, myself and BM1 Gonzales from ANT Gulfport, we

started talking about who was going to take care of who and how we were going to divvy things up.Then we started looking at our logistics and our logistical needs and planned a store run and allthat stuff with our government vehicle the next day whenever we went back down the river, and thatwas Sunday night. And then Monday we sat there trying to get reports and information, and thefear has always been you dont want to travel the river right after a storm because of debris, so wewaited until Tuesday. And once we got a clearer picture of the damage and what area waseffected and what areas werent effected, then we got underway first thing Tuesday morning andheaded on down the river with the Pamlico in the lead and the rest of the boats behind them. We;the 55119, took the cooks to the store in our government vehicle and we loaded up, and whileeverybody was going eight knots down the river we stayed in Baton Rouge and took on stores and




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loaded down heavy and just ran just as fast as we could to catch up with them. We caught up withthem just above New Orleans where the evidence of the storm was, you know the ships werealready grounded and barges were already sunk and trees and everything were everywhere.There wasnt that much debris in the river but along the levee the trees were all messed up and theships were pushed all over the place. We offloaded our stores that we had onto the Pamlico -while we were underway we did a little unrep - and then fell in the back of the flotilla and controlledthings from there.

Q: Okay, so once you got to New Orleans what were you tasked to do?

BMCS Noyes: When we first arrived in New Orleans we came up under the Crescent CityConnection and there was complete darkness, you know, and Ive been in this area for a long timeand that was kind of eerie to see total darkness. But the 55108 had forged ahead and werelooking to see the status of the West Bank Navy Base and suitable moorings there. As we camearound Algiers Point with the Pamlico and the Clamp in the lead, one of the 41s from Station NewOrleans saw some people flashing lights at them from the Hilton Hotel and they reported that onthe radio, and they got all, you know they had been sitting around for days and they were ready togo; they were ready to go over there and rescue people. And so Mr. Lewald asked me to go overand see what was going. So the 55119 and the 41-footer; the 41475 I think it was, from NewOrleans, we went over there and myself and two armed personnel from the 41 climbed up theCanal Street ferry landing and walked into Harrahs where the NOPD had their command post setup and, you know, let them know that the Coast Guard was in on the river now and that were intown. And at that time the NOPD, they had ice, they had water, they had food. They had everythingexcept communications so they were basically isolated. Those police officers at the end of CanalStreet were totally isolated from the rest of the city and there was floodwaters blocking them off tothe north. And they said that the people in the hotel were fine. They had checked on them the daybefore. They just were trying to signal for somebody to bring them food and water.

So we went back to the boat and I made the report to the Pamlico and went on down around to theWest Bank Navy Base where the Navy asked us, through the Pamlico , to help evacuate peoplefrom the East Bank. They were massing around the East Bank Navy Base. And so of course wesaid Yes. So at around 11/1130 at night; Tuesday night, the 55119 and four 41-footers wereholding off in the middle of the river waiting for permission. The Navy made this request and thenthey told us that we had to wait because they had to get permission to do it and it had to go up tosome General and come back, and the next thing you know a Blackhawk lands and Marines hopout and theres security on the East Bank. They brought these people that had already lost theirhomes to floodwaters and were massing up at the gate. They brought them in, you know 10/12 at a

time and we took them across to the West Bank Navy Base where they were ushered up onto afloating barge, upper ramp, onto the levee, out the gate and the gate was closed behind them.Thank you very much. That was it. So we did 120 people like that and then we secured for the nightbecause that was the whole crowd that had amassed over on the East Bank.

So the next morning we wake up to complaints from the locals that the Coast Guard had justdumped people on the levee on the West Bank because people asked them, How did you gethere? Well the Coast Guard brought us over.

Q: So where did they complain to; did they call the CO?




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BMCS Noyes: Well they called the Navy base and they called us on the radio because one of thebarge fleets is right up there and we explained to them what had happened and they understood.By that time the Navy had really gone into a siege mentality on the West Bank. And days later,walking around and driving around the West Bank Navy Base I could probably see why they wentinto a siege mentality because that place was pretty messed up. They had lost a lot of buildingsand trees and stuff like that and they didnt know how long this was going to last, and they knewwhat their supplies were and they werent sharing. They were holding onto it because they didntknow how long it would be.

Wednesday morning we got up and went down to . . .and there was always a plan-a-foot thatferries - and we heard that the ferries were in town - two ferries from Baton Rouge were downthere; the Falesiana [phonetic] and the other one I forget the name of now. And one of the ferrycaptains; Tammy Bruce the guys named Tammy, go figure - we went down to the Chalmetteferry landing to see what was going on down in St. Bernard because we heard of the flooding inChalmette and St. Bernard. We went down there and I jumped off the boat and I walked up theferry landing to try to make contact with locals, and I found the security guard from the Tennecorefinery and I found fire department personnel from St. Bernard and then they hooked me up withthe Sheriff over the radio. And the plan always was; what they were told at Chalmette High School,which was a shelter that had been damaged by floodwater and by the storm, was, Go to the ferrylanding or go to Chalmette Slip. Theres a warehouse at Chalmette Slip which is about a mile upthe river from the ferry landing. So people started trickling into the ferry landing and with the seven41-footers and the three 55-footers we started evacuating people out of the ferry landing, and theplan was to hop, skip and jump up to Chalmette Slip and then on up to Algiers Point as soon asground transportation could be arranged up there. Well with the small boats and the way the quaywall was in the Chalmette Slip we couldnt get them off the boat and up there, so right below that isa floating dock that the city of Chalmette and St. Bernard Port Commission has for the excursionboats that come down for the Chalmette National Battlefield. So we started using that and ofcourse we got their permission and we cut some locks and that was a back door into thiswarehouse where there were thousands of people already. So we started dropping people offthere and then the ferries would come and take about 150 at a pop. And they went out andcommandeered a tugboat and a deck barge; the tugboat Bear I think it was, and then we startedmoving people in mass like that. And then the 41s got away from the personnel evacuation tomore of a safety escort. Also across the river there were two ferries that were up on the levee overthere and with Captain Bruces permission we went over there and got all the life jackets off ofthose. So after I had gone up on the ferry landing and I got stuck on the ferry landing coordinatingstuff - so my BM2 was running the boat back and forth and around and I had a handheld radio and Iwas standing up there, and ended up directing the vessel movements and the people movementsand was there for a good five, six, seven hours. That was one of the days that we lost, we kind oflost that day.

Q: Did you have many people that had medical issues?

BMCS Noyes: The biggest thing was people that left home without their insulin. Everyone wasbarefoot just about. There were minor cuts and scrapes, heat exhaustion because it was hot andthere was no shade, so we did the best we could with the supplies that we had on 41s and the55s. We gave them as much water as we had and we found some candy for the diabetics the bestwe could. There were some medical personnel among the evacuees that helped with whoever.




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We tried to keep the families together as best we could but of course as soon as I said - standingup on the ferry landing - as soon as I yelled out that the families stay together everybody becameeverybody elses cousin . . .

Q: [Laughter].

BMCS Noyes: . . . so you know you had to use a little judgment on that.

Q: Well with all the tension going on did you have any problems with people boiling over and thehostility?

BMCS Noyes: No, the people in St. Bernard are a hardy stock and they wouldnt be the ones toshoot at you. They wouldnt be the ones to . . . they just wanted to get evacuated. Of course thereare thugs in every crowd, alright, and there was a couple guys; young punks, that were cutting inline and were trying to get ahead of people and I pretty much shut a couple of them down. Therewas this one kid, he had tattoos all over him, and he walked right by an elderly gentlemen trying tocarry a big plastic box with some belongings in it, and just walked right by him. And so by then Iwas a little pissed so I yelled at the guy to help out your neighbor and he just looked at me like Ihad something growing out of my forehead. So I yelled at him again and I stopped the entireevacuation process and I just unloaded on this guy, and he finely picked up the guys box andhelped him get on the barge and as soon as he stepped on the ferry he dropped it. I would haveliked to have taken care of him.

Q: Well where there any moments, acts of kindness, that stand out in your mind; I mean there aretons of them but one in particular?

BMCS Noyes: We had elderly ladies, people were coming up in office chairs; being pushedaround in office chairs because they didnt have wheelchairs. One lady had a wheelchair and whenshe got on the ferry she donated her wheelchair to stay there at the ferry landing and we used it,and stuff like that. But yes, if one person was carrying a heavy load there were several people thatwould help them out if they didnt have anything of their own. So yes, there was.

Q: And what would you say were the greatest risks in this kind of operation that you just wentthrough; was it dealing with the people or the air operations that were going on - I mean particularlyfor you - but is there anything that stands out as something that was kind of hairy?

BMCS Noyes: Hairy on the river as in operations?

Q: Yes.

BMCS Noyes: You know we operated at night and there was no traffic control but then therewasnt that much traffic, and we were familiar with the river and so that wasnt a problem. When theNavy showed up it got a little more dangerous because theyre pretty much cowboys driving theirlittle small boats waking the crap out of everybody and zooming around at 900 miles an hour.

There were some places where we went because we were comfortable that we probably shouldnthave gone without body armor and without weapons of our own. After that first day in Chalmette




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and when the machine became a little better organized and it was obvious that the boat crewscould be better utilized, we had to pull - because the MSST hadnt shown up yet and we didnthave National Guard - we had to pull boat crews to be security at the ferry landings but then we hadthe ferries and the barge to handle people transfers. So you know you had a lot of boats rafted upoutside of other boats and people would wake by and there was enough, You waked me, I wakedyou complaints going around all over the place. But as far as safety, I walked up the Harrahs ontwo separate occasions in the span of three days and the difference of the condition of downtownNew Orleans in the span of those three days was just phenomenal. We carried the CaleasieuParish Sheriffs Department; picked them up at the River Walk and took them down - there were 60of them - and it took all three 55-footers. We carried them down to Chalmette for security downthere and that was . . . theyre walking down the River Walk trying to find a place to get on the boatand the looters on the River Walk were coming out and seeing these 60 police officers with theirlong guns and everything and just loaded for bear, and theyd turn around and run, so that was kindof funny. But we heard on the TV that the Pope was praying for us and that the Navy was comingand so we knew everything was going to be alright.

Q: Well what were the most challenging aspects of your mission?

BMCS Noyes: Keeping the young men and women down there focused.

Q: Are you talking about the crew members or are you talking about the people you wereevacuating?

BMCS Noyes: The crew members. You know because a lot of these kids havent seen . . .

Q: Devastation like that.

BMCS Noyes: Well Ive been in the Coast Guard for 25 years and Ive been through a lot ofhurricanes, of course nothing of this magnitude, but because I had participated in the HurricanePam exercise and we had a good idea of the devastation and the need to evacuate people, I triedto keep everybody informed of that and tried to keep them anticipating what the next thing wouldbe. And you know with all the helicopters flying around were sitting there going, Were just aboutat the flight hours, and, Theres going to be a crash. And about ten minutes later we heard of thefirst helicopter that crashed. And all my guys look at me and go, How did you know that?Common sense dictates. And then shortly after that I said And a Halliburton subsidiary is going toget a no-bid contract to come in and clean stuff up, and the next day Halliburton got a contract.And so my 20-year old Fireman was just going, Alright, this is getting scary. But you know the latenight conversations with him and trying to keep him focused and the rest of the crew, and the restof the boat crews, you know I kind of, you know . . . .

Q: Yes. I was going to ask, at the end of the day what was the mood like? You just tried to keepeverybody together . . .

BMCS Noyes: Very somber.

Q: It was very somber?




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BMCS Noyes: Well like I said, a lot of these kids had not experienced this and had nothing tobase it on because when you see person after person after person that has just, (a): theyve losteverything and the condition that theyre in after three or four days, you know theyve been trudgingthrough these floodwaters with God knows what floating in it. And of course they didnt have anyshoes but yet they could carry their guns and their booze out.

Q: Did any of the evacuees relay any of the reasons why they stayed there or did you have achance to talk to anybody or did you hear something through the crewmembers why they stayed inNew Orleans?

BMCS Noyes: I can tell you exactly why they stayed in New Orleans; because they were born andraised here.

Q: Not economic conditions or, I want to save my pet, or Im not leaving my home?

BMCS Noyes: There was a lot of, I want to save my pet, alright. We saw everything from littledogs to big dogs to, you know, yes, I have a hard time with that person. I have two dogs of my ownbut believe me, if it came to the difference between evacuating or not evacuating just because ofmy dogs, you know my dogs rode Hurricane Opal out in the backyard in Mobile if that tells youanything, by themselves. Of course I was away then.

But the people of St. Bernard are of hardy stock, are of, you know, This is my place and Iveweathered . . ., you know if I heard it once Ive heard it a thousand times, Well you know Betsythis, Hurricane Betsy that, Hurricane Betsy this, or Camille, And I lived through Camille and I canremember Camille, I was ten years old. So you dont ever think that its going to be as bad as itactually is.

Now in Orleans Parish; different, alright. When we had the Hurricane Pam exercise the biggestconcern always was people in Orleans Parish who did not have transportation of their own. So theplan was to use city buses. But then how do you designate all those RTA bus drivers as essentialpersonnel and make them be in harms way, with or without their families, in order to evacuateother people, okay. Its just like President Broussard over in Jefferson Parish. Now hes catchingcrap for letting the pump operators leave a day early, alright. What difference would those pumpoperators have made to the flooding had they been there? And theres a lot of armchairquarterbacking nowadays. But all this stuff had been discussed and talked about and discussedand talked about, and they had a plan, they had a plan, they had a plan. They just didnt execute itthe way it was supposed to go.

Q: Now did you have skiff boats down there too?

BMCS Noyes: We had our 18-foot skiff. We went through a lot of trouble to make sure that thatboat was over there and that people were there to operate i t. As we came down Tuesday it had todrive down the West Bank through the downed power lines and driving around the levee and I hada BM3 and an MK3 that were just very exhausted at the end of that trip.

Q: Everything; all the debris in the roadway.




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BMCS Noyes: All the debris in the roadway and the darkness. But they showed remarkableingenuity in getting through the metropolitan area.

Q: Were they armed when they went through?

BMCS Noyes: No.

Q: Okay.

BMCS Noyes: Were an aids to navigation team, we dont carry guns.

Q: Okay. Now once they got there what were they tasked to do or did they take it on their own totrailer their boat?

BMCS Noyes: They met up with us at the Navy base which is what they were told to do. Theoriginal plan was everybody was going to congregate at Waterford Nuclear Power Plant up byBonnet Carre Spillway at Mile 135, but as we got closer and more information became available

we moved that down into New Orleans. So they left Baton Rouge thinking they were going toWaterford and then they hopped, skipped and jumped on down and met up with us in NewOrleans. And our skiff stayed over on the West Bank for a day and they ran with us on the 55 andthen finely I got word of, I found out how people were getting back and forth over the Huey P. Longand so I dispatched them over to Sector New Orleans to assist as need be. By the time they gotover there the people in Orleans Parish had already started shooting at the rescuers so theywerent able to get underway in our skiff because they werent armed, so basically they were stuckat Sector New Orleans and they ended up ripping up carpets and cleaning up stuff for a day or twountil through their ingenuity they were able to. . . they wouldnt let them leave without an armedescort so they found a couple of guys from MSO Morgan City who were going home and they had

guns. So they called them their armed escort and they left and they made it back to Houma towhere the BM1 was to serve as a relief crew and shore-side logistician from there. So they gotinvolved, not like they wanted to but they got involved.

Q: Alright. Well how long did your mission last there and what happened next; you came backhere to Dulac?

BMCS Noyes: We operated there in New Orleans for eight days. At the end of the first four daysthe boat crews; the 41-footer crews that were there, got relieved by boat crews from the 1st and5th District and then two days after that the Pamlico and the Clamp and the 55108 got chopped off

that mission and were sent down to Venice down river to start restoring the mouth of the river;aides and navigation. I was left behind to run this flotilla of small boats, which by that time theSpencer was inport and the Tortuga had shown up, and the plan was that our boat crews would beberthed on the Tortuga, which let me tell you, is just a disgusting ship.

Q: Ive been on there. I was there [chuckle]. Okay.

BMCS Noyes: So the crew of the 55119 went through two separate 41-footer boat crew swapsand it was the second Wednesday, yes, the second Wednesday. One day where the Spencer wasthere and we were running all the small boats and everybody was asking for a boat here or there,




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and the mission was evolving from evacuation to port security. And the Spencer was taking moreand more of that job on and we were just dispatching small boats to cover that mission, and thatswhen we hit the wall and I told my crew, I said, Guys, Im sorry to be the first one to call it quits[chuckle]. And my BM2 turned around and said, Senior Chief, look around. Whos here? Whosleft here from whenever we showed up Tuesday whenever it was? And then I knew it was time forus to . . . so we took a couple of days off and we parked the boat at the Navy West Bank and wecame home and took some down time, leaving the 55 there for the 9th District SAR team that hadshown up with their ICE boats to use as their communications platform. So they utilized the 55 overthere for the radios while we came back for some crew rest and to find out what was going on.That was the first time I got out to Slidell to see my house that had a 22-inch pine tree through theside of it.

Q: So you actually had damage yourself?

BMCS Noyes: Yes.

Q: Were you able to evacuate anything out of your house or you never even went back?

BMCS Noyes: I only had six to nine inches of water in my house and my wife and two boys werein Florida and my 18 year old daughter was in the dormitory up at LSU, so she was okay. I wasntworried about her. But some friends of ours in Slidell cut the tree out of the side of the house andput a tarp up and started pulling out carpet. Later on that same day my wife and two brother-in-laws and a friend of ours from Mobile showed up and finished ripping the carpets out. So we gotthe wet carpet and padding out of our house relatively quick and some of the furniture that waswater damaged and everything. So our house, while its not as nice as some, its not as bad asothers. But were facing about a years worth of rebuild on our house in Slidell.

Q: Are you receiving any kind of assistance on that?

BMCS Noyes: You know we got the 2,000 dollar FEMA grant and we got the 2,300 dollartemporary living stuff; Red Cross money, Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, insurance. USAA is . . .because the tree came through the side of the house and all the water was from the tree, I donthave to worry about flood because being the arrogant cuss that I am I didnt have flood insurancebecause I pay extra to live in this Flood Zone C, which is high ground. There were some housesaround me that took water because they were a little bit lower then us, because I had spent allsummer building up my lot. I put 18 yards of sand and two layers of sod all around my house duringthe course of the summer just to build my lot up.

Q: To keep it high.

BMCS Noyes: Yes.

Q: Now could you elaborate on ATON discrepancies around here; whats going on with that?

BMCS Noyes: Post Katrina or Rita?

Q: Well you can do both [chuckle].




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BMCS Noyes: During Katrina in our AOR; in Dulacs AOR, we didnt suffer that many outages.They were minor because we were on the west side of the storm and the crews from ANT MorganCity and ANT New Orleans, because ANT New Orleans was totally wiped out but their boats andeverything and their crews were okay, and they went over to Morgan City. But the other ANTs ranour area and fixed minor discrepancies while we were out on the river doing the kings businessout there. There was one barge that was sunk off the right descending bank that posed a problem.So the crew of the 55119; we had some buoys on deck. We had a buoy on deck and we wereable to salvage a programmable lantern from Group ANTs office at the ISC. We got some chainfrom the Pamlico and we recovered a Dormor [phonetic] sinker from the ISC and we went out andset a wreck buoy on the sunken barge in the river so commerce could start again; ships startedmoving up and down the river. And then after we came back from our little break; crew rest period,we went into the aide recovery mission and we got out into the Gulf outlet where we visited 12aides in a day after stopping at the ISC and loading stuff, and getting kicked off the ISC becauseobviously it was an ecological nightmare and we didnt know about it. So we went in there andstarted loading gear and then they came and made us leave. But after you spend two and a halfhours in the industrial locks with 47 dead fish you get a good feeling for the ecological impact ofthis particular thing. When you see cockroaches dying in New Orleans in the water you know itsnot good.

Q: Now out here at the station do you have any severe damage?

BMCS Noyes: The damage to ANT Dulac was caused by hurricane Rita.

Q: Okay.

BMCS Noyes: And if you look out here youll see some piles of bushes, branches and stuff. Thatwas Hurricane Katrina.

Q: Okay.

BMCS Noyes: Hurricane Rita put four/four and a half foot of water all throughout the unit.

Q: Okay.

BMCS Noyes: So all the damage that youll see or you see here now is Hurricane Rita related,which we had just brought our computers back down off the top of the lockers and had started

getting back into, Alright, we need to go out and work some aides and back to normal business,and then we got the order to evacuate for Rita. Well the computers were not put back up on thelockers because it was going into Texas! And so the water went over everybodys desk. I had twocoffee cups on my desk that my children had given me that were full of water.

Q: Well has anybody been out here to assess the damage?

BMCS Noyes: The very first day that the water receded CEU Miami came out and did anassessment. Shortly after that we had an ERT out of ISC St. Louis; the Emergency ResponseTeam out of ISC St. Louis come out with a Bobcat and cleaned out the parking lot the best they




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could, pushing mud everywhere. Of course we have some shoaling concerns here down by theboat ramp where the 55 ties up and we didnt really want the mud pushed down the boat ramp,which would have been the easiest thing. So we wanted to get it out into the yard to maybe raiseup the property a little bit but it was still too muddy so they pushed it out the front gate. It just sohappened that this house right outside the front gate belongs to a Methodist womens group andtheres a nurse up in Houma that came down to check on the property and saw all the mud that hadbeen pushed out of the Coast Guard front gate and it was in her yard now, and so she knewsomebody who knew somebody who got the word to an Admiral who got the word to me through achaplain. So I had to call her up and apologize and make sure that she knew that we were going toget the mud out of the way. And Mr. Rock; the caretaker of the community center down here inDulac, he got out there on his little tractor and pushed the mud out of the way as best as he couldand he told me not to worry about it. But its a tight knit community down here. Well take care ofeach other.

Q: Well are there any memorable moments that youd care to share with us; either something thathappened while you were in New Orleans or the people around here that helped you out?

BMCS Noyes: Sure. After Hurricane Katrina; the first Sunday after Hurricane Katrina, we hadbeen operating with the St. Bernard Parish Sheriffs Department who had commandeered theCajun Queen, which is an excursion boat, to use as their headquarters because everything elsehad already been messed up. Well it just so happened that the Cajun Queen had just beenstocked with liquor and beer by its owner. So Sunday night as our mission was changing up atAlgiers point and because we had provided AC&R techs to the Cajun Queen and MKs off theSpencer had fixed their generators and their air conditioner and stuff like this, and you know, whenyou get a group of Coasties together somebodys going to go foraging for beer. On Sunday wewere able to find 196 beers. We found ice out at the Alerio Center in Westwego and we got in agovernment vehicle and I drove out there and got two loads of ice. We had 101 people operatingon a little flotilla in between the MSST, the 41s, the 55s, the Pamlico and the Clamp, and we wereable to amass 196 beers, iced down and ready to go. So we sat out there on the ferry landing atAlgiers point and had a little community . . .

Q: Fellowship out there.

BMCS Noyes: Yes, a little fellowship.

Q: Also, is there anything youd like to add that we havent covered here?

BMCS Noyes: ANT Dulac is like a social experiment for the Coast Guard, me being the first ex-quartermaster receiving a shore ATON command and my XPO; BM1 Karen Boxwell, is the firstever female down here. So everybody is waiting for us to just screw it up.

So she didnt get underway with us because theres no female berthing on a 55 and she was leftbehind to be a Tanb Coxswain. Well the Tanb wasnt needed. So her husband is an AST2 at theair station and in-between the job that he was doing; rescuing people, he was the first one on theroof of the nursing home in Chalmette. You know he was the first one on many roofs that nobodywanted to be the first one on.




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She opened up her house to be like our forward operating base because its a 20-minute drivedown there and its a 20-minute drive back up, so we just operated out of Houma. She found aWal-Mart in Westwego. She just happened to be driving by and there were people standing outfront and she stopped and she just started talking to them and told them what was going on. TheCoast Guard this and that, bla bla, bla. They opened up that Wal-Mart to search and rescuepersonnel. So everyday she would go to that Wal-Mart and get a certain amount of supplies thatthey were giving to her. One day she would go to the air station with underwear, socks, clothing,fruit cups, rubber gloves, you name it. One day she would go to the air station and one day shewould make it into the West Bank, to the river where we were, and we had like a Walgreens on the55. You know it got to a point where I was feeling guilty about the bug spray, the hand sanitizer, thegloves, and of course we were passing it out to everybody as needed. But whenever I got downthere one morning and I counted, we had like 13 fruit cups, and baby wipes; because thats howyou had to take a bath, with baby wipes. So I went to every small boat in our little flotilla and I toldthem, You send me one guy over and were going to open up the store, and everybody got toshop and take what they wanted. But she had gone to this store everyday to get stuff and bring it inand that was her part.

After Hurricane Rita; the Friday Hurricane Rita came through, she was coming down to the unit toget the generator because they lost power up there again and our generator got left here. Normallyit was up there at her house in Houma, you know, after Katrina. So her and her husband are drivingdown the road in a government vehicle because they had been evaded up there and got as far asthe Grand Cailou Fire Department where the water was; where the flooding was, where they raninto the flooding, and she talked to the fire chief of the Grand Cailou Volunteer Fire Department upthere who made a request for federal assistance. He said that there were five to ten thousandpeople that needed to be rescued, which is basically the population of South Terrebonne. FromPointe-aux-Chene to Montague to Dulac, to DuLarge; all these little communities south of Houmawere flooded because the levee breaks. She got on the phone to the sector - I was over in Floridawith my family, alright - she called me to let me know what was going on. She got on the phonewith the sector. She was designated as the On-scene Commander for Coast Guard response tothe flooding of South Terrebonne, coordinated helicopter rescues, coordinated boat rescues, andin the first day alone contacted 250 to 300 people asking them did they want to be rescued, youknow asking them, Are you okay, do you want to be rescued, and they brought out three specialneed victims. Thats all that would leave and they were all helicopter rescues. The next day;Saturday, I left Florida and started coming back over here and she got down, they; the crew, with aBM1 in charge, got down here at first light and working with the Terrebonne Parish SheriffsDepartment, the Louisiana National Guard and the Arkansas National Guard, they sent sevenhelicopters over here; the Coast Guard sent seven helicopters, and knowing that not all seven ofthem could be used in one clump she devised a plan to divvy them up, you know, Give me acouple here, give me a couple here and give and give me a couple, and then send the rest of themon over to Vermilion Parish, where there was a need. I knew the officer in charge of the Pelican was dealing with his own flooding event over there, so with her talking to me and me talking to herand me talking to him, the information got around and the helicopters got dispersed where theyneeded to be dispersed. But she was the On-scene Coordinator for the Coast Guard response forFriday and all day Saturday. I showed up around one oclock. We got in the skiff and we camedown here and we took a look at the unit. We floated across the driveway. I took the flag down. Ivegot both the flags from the unit from Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita and were going tomount those somewhere. But her actions personally . . . we know that there were six special needvictims that were medivaced out. She even actually had to be hoisted up with one because the




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lady had Alzheimers and was scared so she sat in the basket with her and hugged her as she washoisted up into the helicopter and got out of the basket, and then it was lowed back down. Youknow and of course her husbands a rescue swimmer.

Q: She was ready for it.

BMCS Noyes: The guy that was in the helicopter knew her and this lady was starting to freak outso he just went up and said, Sit down, and she sat in the basket and up they went. But her actionsthen, her actions during Katrina, the entire crews actions, alright, and this is a small nine-manANT, and we just kicked some ass. Its plain and simple. And all the while there are still peoplesaying that shes a female and she doesnt know what shes doing and she cant do the job, and it

just pisses me off beyond belief.

Q: Well that goes on.

BMCS Noyes: I get a little emotional about that.

Q: Alright. Well thank you very much. It was great. You covered everything pretty well.

BMCS Noyes: Ive been going over this stuff in my head.

Q: What you were going to say?

BMCS Noyes: No, just because from Day One Ive always been on ships and we always keptmeticulous logs. And from Day One I tried to write stuff down but then it just got too busy andnobody really kept a log, so at the end of every day you would sit down and try to go over what youdid and try to keep it straight. And of course, you know its been seven weeks so you talk to a

thousand people, Well what did you see, what did you do and sometimes you can get through itand sometimes you cant.

Q: Yes, theres just too much. You can only do so much.

BMCS Noyes: But the biggest thing is, yes, weve got to get out and work some buoys. Wevegot to get back to ATON and every time you turn around theres something.

Q: Theres something coming at you.

BMCS Noyes: And now weve got Tropical Storm Wilma.

Q: Yes. Well when do you think youre going to get back to normal operations or do you have anyidea?

BMCS Noyes: It will be about a year before everything is . . . and we had plans to cut the roof offthe building and add a second story because this is not the first time that ANT Dulac has beenflooded and that plan was kind of put on the back burner for 06. But now its being brought to theforefront because we were a total loss. We lost everything down there so it doesnt make sense to

just go and rebuild.




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Q: Are they going to rebuild this building? Theyre going to get rid of that?

BMCS Noyes: Well if they go through with the smart plan theyll use this cinderblock building as aworkshop on the bottom and build a second story, elevate it to where the next time it floods itll justflood cinderblock. Captain Mueller up at the sector has come up with a plan of tool boxes ondollies and trailers to evacuate stuff like NASCAR trailers; you just push your tools on the trailerand go. So that seems to be . . . his thing is, I said it right after Katrina and they all thought I wasan idiot. Now Im one of the smart people because as the idea takes hold . . . .

Q: Totally modular.

BMCS Noyes: Exactly, just get up and go. Get up and go and evacuate.

Q: Alright. So do you want to take us around and well take a few photos?

BMCS Noyes: Sure.

END OF INTERVIEW


u.s. coast guard oral history program - bmcs steven noyes

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