I think I left off after or busy day of flying around the city where my crew and I logged 11 hours of flight time… A lot of flying on our part. Anyhow the next few days were filled with us bringing order to the chaos. Things change on a daily basis, missions, how to conduct missions, who is our controlling agency. For me, I am the operations officer so when I fly I am sort of out of the loop of all the changes. When I land I need to run around do all of my post flight debriefings…. No not underwear then gather the required information to write the next days flight schedule. A busy day that ends around 11-12pm. There is really no easy way to explain how things are working here. Our ship is sort of the New Orleans Emergency operations center and every other day or so all the chiefs fly to the ship which in turn turns the ship into a crazy environment. Leaders getting piped aboard, the Governor, the JTF commander Gen Honore and a literal boat load of other people who get special piping when coming aboard. One of the best stories I have heard about cockiness is when some generals aircraft landed he got out fired up a stogie and strode across the flight desk smoking away. He got the point where he was to enter the ship and he put out his cigar on the flight deck. This is pretty ballsy. Another good story happed to one of our own. General Honore was on the flight deck waiting for the Louisiana Governor to arrive. He leaned over to one of the kids working the flight deck and asked when the Governor was going to land. The kid replied, “sir I don’t think he has landed yet.” The general proceeded to chew the kid a new asshole because he did not know that the Louisiana Governor was a she and not a he. I doubt the general knew that the kid he chewed out was a Canadian and probably knows more about US leadership then some other US kids on the boat. Just some of the fun aboard ship.
I forget the day Friday I think, but Vice President Chaney came aboard and was briefed by all the key players. A few from our detachment saw him as he was whisked through the ship. This day as also filled with multiple VIP hits.
Yesterday Saturday 10 Sept Michigan once again lost to Notre Dame and I owe Joe a beer. Anyhow I went up flying for an hour over sector 4, our new area of responsibility for air cover if you will. We however had to break off the mission early because of communications problems with our helicopter.
The city has been divided into 4 sectors, the Army and national guard each have one, the navy one and the coast guard one. Our sector follows the Mississippi south for about 8 miles then north inland for about 8 miles to a marshy area then back toward the city and an industrial canal, sort of a five sided box. Anyhow this does two things it allows for traffic deconfliction, eliminate midair crashes and stream line taskings.
On the bright side of this disaster, it has given the Government a real world chance to test and evaluate a no shit dirty bomb/chem/bio scenario. A lot of the lessons learned here will help if heaven for bid something on this scale not made by nature happens again.
So what are things like? Well yesterday I did get a chance to get off the boat and stroll around the streets of New Orleans downtown district. I took Sam, Sherry and Shaiboon and we left the ship and walked along the river front complex down to the rail crossing in front of Harra’s casino on Canal street. This is sort of the head quarters and life support area for all of the rescue workers and news crews. Under the Harra’s drive up reception area there were people in line to get some grub, burgers drinks and such. Lots of agencies from around the country are here, I saw a police truck from Pontiac Michigan, NYPD Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol the 82nd airborne. I do have a soft spot in my heart for the boys in camies. I try and shake their hands offer any services the ship can proved for them, IE showers and hot meals and if they can a little AC to cool their bones. There job is not a fun one, walking the streets and going door to door. Fortunately they are not recovering bodies; this is left to civilian agencies. I have even seen an LA county Coroners office bubba wondering around. We continued out walking tour down Canal Street to Bourbon for the most part the city is in good shape except for all of the trash and where the liquor stores and sneaker marts were looted. A shame. As Sam mentioned it looked no worse then the day after fat Tuesday. A few days of some good cleanup and the city will appear ship shape. Granted some windows on sky scrapers were busted and some of the older buildings collapsed. On Bourbon, we even found a bar that was up and running and selling beer. I am not sure how cold the beer was, however there were people partaking, and we even chatted a little with the a wall street journal reporter. We walked a few more blocks then turn up toward the French Market and past Jackson square I think that is the name of the joint where all the palm readers and horse and buggies used to hang out. This area is in good shape. Kind eery wondering around when there are no people around. Café Dumond was still there however no Binets were being served. We went by the little park where the news casters are all set up to do their evening updates and took a few pics. Walking down the sea wall park to the ship, there are numerous tents set up for people to sleep in, appeared mostly to be support personnel for the civilian agencies.
On the ship things have been interesting. As you all know the President will be joining us this afternoon. So yesterday his advance party showed up and things once again turned interesting with security and white house staffers running around the ship. HMX-1 the aviation unit that transports the boss did some touch and goes on our ship as a dress rehearsal for his arrival. Like I mentioned earlier not ever day do we do the kind of flying we are doing here. Kind of neat to be the center of the universe if only for a small moment in time. Ah how quickly I forget some little details, the Chief of naval Operations showed up yesterday as well. He told the assembled gaggle of ships company in the hangar bay that we are doing a great job however he does not know when we are going to be able to go home.
Last night all eyes were watching football on the numerous screens around the boat. A couple of us shot the breeze with some of the Secret Service agents who are sharing our hall way in the berthing area and yes in their little black bags are no teddy bears. Chris Broussard would be having fun checking out all the different weapons the different agencies are packing. Not just your standard M-16 or 9MM some other cool little things like MP-5s and some new state of the art toys.
Enough for now, more later. I need to hit the gym, and yes, yesterday was the first day I was able to get in and run a few miles. Nice to finally have a little bit of time to goof off!
