Killer Earth
Killer Earth
Author and Naval Historian John Sherwood Part I
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On this episode of Killer Earth, V and Kat are joined by John Sherwood, Ph.D, naval historian and author of A Global Force for Good: Sea Services Humanitarian Operations in the Twenty-First Century.
We dive into the history of the U.S. Navy's humanitarian involvement with natural disasters in Part One of this two-part interview.
Read his book here: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/publications/publications-by-subject/global-force-for-good.html
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-sherwood-03747011a/
Listen to John's awesome podcast, Preble Hall!
https://www.usna.edu/Museum/PrebleHall/index.php
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Thank you for listening and we love you all so much!
Earthquakes, lightning, flooring, rain, tornadoes, not music.
unknownKiller.
SPEAKER_05Hey guys, we have a super special episode for you. Oh yeah. Um, we just interviewed John Sherwood. He's an author. He wrote an amazing book about the US Navy's involvement with humanitarian crises all over the world. And not only was he probably one of the smartest people I've ever had a conversation with, right? He was so cool and he was so patient with like probably like kind of dumb questions that we had.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_05We're like, wait, like I was like, wait, the Coast Guard can arrest people? He's like, Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05Like I didn't.
SPEAKER_04There was a lot of sergeants and lieutenants and like a lot of like cool like verbiage that I just wasn't familiar with, but it he like broke it down in layman's terms. So it was like really nice.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And you know, I what I think I learned from speaking to him, and you'll you'll hear as you listen to the it's gonna be a two-part episode, but what you'll hear is the level of involvement the US Navy actually has when there are people suffering, and and when people just need basic things like clean water and um medical care and food, and um, it's really quite amazing.
SPEAKER_04So we can see a lot, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_05And now you'll see there's a part of the episode where we talk about animal encounters, and um, it'll be in part two. And now I want to interview John like all the time about like animals he's had encounters with. I'm like, you should be joining our podcast.
SPEAKER_03I know. I was like, do you want to be like the third wheel?
SPEAKER_05Anyway, um, yeah, so enjoy um learn, you're gonna learn a lot, like we did.
SPEAKER_04And actually we're covering like he's talking about um natural disasters that he that we've already covered so far. So it's really interesting. It's like the perfect way to kind of get some more information about the um some of the topics we've covered.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, specifically three natural disasters we've covered. He has he wrote about in his book. Um, and we're gonna link to where you can read his book and where you can find it and his social and all that.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, and he also has a really cool podcast too, and we'll throw that in the uh the link as well.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So anyway, check out our hang with John Sherwood.
SPEAKER_05Get into it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, hello everyone. Welcome to Killer Earth. This is V and Kat, and we have a really special guy on the podcast today.
SPEAKER_03We do. We're so excited.
SPEAKER_05John Sherwood. Now, John, are you the official Navy historian or a historian that writes about the Navy? Tell us about this.
SPEAKER_00I am a historian employed by the Navy. So I'm a GS civilian. Uh, and I work for the Naval History and Heritage Command, which is in the Washington Navy Yard. And our command includes historians, archivists, underwater archaeologists, curators, because we we own and operate all the Navy museums. I should say this, however, the views that I'm going to express today represent my views and not the views of the US Navy, the US Marine Corps, any of the services, the DOD, the US government. Got it, etc.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Okay. Awesome. So you go ahead, B. Uh so you wrote a book, um, and we're gonna discuss your book today on the podcast. It's called A Global Force for Good, Sea Services Humanitarian Operations in the 21st Century. Um, I read, I didn't read all of it. I read chunks of it because it's very long.
SPEAKER_04But it's we didn't have enough time to get through it before we recorded, but we're really excited to like hear your stories. Um, and you reached out to us. How did you find us?
SPEAKER_00I was doing a search for uh podcasts focused on natural disasters, and your your podcast showed up as number one. And then I started listening to your podcast, thought it was great, and loved the title of it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, thanks.
SPEAKER_00Hey, this would be a great podcast to get on to if you're willing to have me, because my book is focused on natural disasters and how the military in particular responds to natural disasters.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we're so excited to hear like your stories and the people, you know, about the people you've interviewed, and it will give us like, you know, insight on things that we have no idea about. And we love that you found us and that you liked our podcast because we are kind of like um, you know, it's it's comedy, but it's dark, but it's like, you know, it's everything. We're we're trying to kind of tell the stories of how we see it. And um, we're so glad to have another person on. So thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Um, we do though, I will say, we do very intensive research. So I don't know if that was um something you noticed, John, but we try our hardest to understand these topics, but we're not um historians or scientists or anything, obviously. So, but I'm a little shocked that you've listened to our podcast. Like I knew that you would know see you saw us somewhere, but thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you. Well, they're very good. I enjoyed, I listened to about 10 over the weekend and oh awesome. Enjoyed them very much. Great.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so let's get into your book and um you know tell us maybe about how you came to write it and a little background on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sure. The um Naval History and Heritage Command, we did a study about 10 years back about gaps in naval history, what hasn't been written. And humanitarian operations was one of those gaps that was identified. To me, it was a perfect fit because I had spent some of my earlier career looking at the Vietnam War, and there were a number of huge humanitarian operations there. Probably one of the one of the biggest is are these movements of refugees after the first Indo-Chinese, Chinese War in 19 in the 1950s, and then in 1975 when South Vietnam fell. So the Navy was involved in moving those those people. The the country also suffers from various natural disasters, and when the US military was there, it responded. So those this was a natural seemed to be a natural topic for me to look at. And when I started doing some digging in our records, I I found that we have a we have a detachment of reservists that go out and interview Navy personnel after wars and conflicts, but also after natural disasters. And they sent they sent a a big team to New Orleans after Katrina and essentially did all of those interviews. So the only interviews I had to do myself were interviews from Tomodachi. There were some interviews done by reservists, but some of them got corrupted, so I had to redo them. And then and then Indonesia. So I have three major case studies: the the Boxer Day earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia in 2004.
SPEAKER_04My personal favorite.
SPEAKER_00And then the US response to that in 2005, and then Hurricane Katrina in 05, and the last one I look at is the triple disaster, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in 2011. Yes. And the title of my book, it's the Navy was so heavily vested in these natural disasters at the time that it made natural disaster response part of its strategy, which was called cooperative strategy for the 21st century. It was it was the lowest priority in this in the list of you know, the first being war fighting, deterrence, nuclear deterrence, naval presence, but humanitarian operations were a part of the strategy. And it also became an advertising slogan to try to recruit new sailors.
SPEAKER_05I read, sorry to interrupt.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no worries.
SPEAKER_05I was reading, I think it was kind of in the beginning of the book about how, like you just said, the humanitarian approach wasn't um one of the Navy's like four or five major objectives, but then it became something where it was actually about like stabilizing unstable areas and doing it's out, it's also about outreach and the US government being a good sight to see in a crisis zone. So it was also yeah.
SPEAKER_00So af after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and then the collapse, the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, the Navy all of a sudden was not was left with no adversary or no pure competitor. And so it started looking at other missions, and one of those missions was trying to stabilize ungoverned or spaces that were poorly governed. And one of the things that they found was that a lot of these areas happened to be prone to natural disasters or climate-related problems such as drought, famine, disease. And that so that impulse has extended all the way through 9-11 because a lot of the terrorist groups were coming from these areas. More recently, it's fallen down the list of priorities because we have other other issues we're dealing with right now. But it's still the bottom line is that the US military, because of its global presence and its size, is often the only entity that can respond significantly if there is a natural disaster somewhere like Bangladesh or Indonesia. No one else is there. We're the only ones there.
SPEAKER_05I don't think people understand this. Yeah. Like I just I don't feel like many people know this as a you know, and it's more than just ships.
SPEAKER_00We have uh logistical centers, uh places where there are supplies, goods, like in the Indian Ocean, we have Diego Garcia, near Indonesia. We have Singapore, we have Guam, we have Suda Bay and in Crete, we have all we have bases in in southern Italy, we have bases all over the world, and you need those bases because ships alone ships can make water, okay, and make a lot of water. But when it comes to other needs, such as food, medicine, construction materials, that has to come from places like Guam, the great Pacific supermarket, as then as the Navy calls it.
SPEAKER_04So there's bases essentially set up, like ready to go all over the world in case something happens?
SPEAKER_00They are set up to support the Navy, whether it be in a war fighting role or in a humanitarian role. So there are pack there are basically pallet supplies sitting in, you know, sitting in warehouses in Guam or Singapore or Diego Garcia. And if there's a disaster, ships can pull in, grab those supplies, go and and perform humanitarian relief.
SPEAKER_04Awesome. You know, it's so funny. It's like I didn't even know that was like that. That might sound so ignorant of me, but I thought it just like we just came from the US and like helped them. I didn't know there was already like places like set up ready to go um in case something happens with like the food situation. I did have a question about the ships can make water and we don't have to get too crazy into it, but is that like do they have like a system where they turn like seawater into drinking water? Is that what you meant by that?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00They can turn uh they could turn seawater into drinking water. It gets filtered, it's as good as you know, Poland Spring. Wow. Wow. Or whatever, you know, deer park, whatever your bottled water of choice is. But they can every sh every navy ship of of any size has that capacity.
SPEAKER_04I had no idea. That's awesome. Why are we doing more of that?
SPEAKER_00That's your basic need in a in a disaster relief. But this technology, this you know, it it basically uses it distill the water from seawater. Okay. Interesting. Um even now sailboats sailing across the Pacific that are pleasure sailboats, 30-foot sailboats, have those machines. Okay. It's just the Navy has you know has the capability of supplying water to us to a mid-sized city. Wow, okay. That's so interesting. Each ship is like if you look at a an aircraft carrier, 5,000 people, Abraham Lincoln, it responded to the the Boxer Day earthquake. It has 5,000 people. And those people have a range of talents. So you have surgeons, dentists, nurses, people who can on a carrier, you can't, and if you're in a war, you can't necessarily get a part, you have to fabricate it. So they have the ability to fabricate, to build things. Uh they have they have um not certain care. Well, the the amphibs have engineers on them. So people who can go and build bridges, for example, or roads. So all the things that you would need if your city is wiped out, Navy task forces have, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it does. It's just like mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_00I like I kind of knew all this, but I didn't, if that may I didn't realize it was so widespread and that they, you know, have so many different types of special thing if if something breaks on a ship, it's often made on the ship. It's not like they they that's crazy, log into Amazon and order a spare apart for everything that goes wrong. Because on a ship, and not just Navy ship, but any ship, sailboat, everything is constantly breaking. Because it is a very harsh environment, the ocean, the ocean environment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, my uh my husband's a merchant marine and he's constantly fixing things. So I get that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. So you know. Yeah, he's an engineer. Well, speaking of merchant mariners, now that you bring that up, our fleet of auxiliary, so the many of the supply ships that are run by the military sea lift command, who are which are essential to these disaster relief operations because they bring in the supplies, they are run by civilian mariners, not not Navy personnel, but that well, they are civilians, not uh uniform personnel.
SPEAKER_04Right. Yeah, he knows some people that um work, you know, like on the Navy boats, like helping. Um, so that's that's interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that was an issue uh in the Japanese instance in in 2011, because to keep the the um Reagan carrier strike group uh there off the east coast of of Japan, supplying villages with whatever they needed, they needed supplies. And one of the one of the ships that that was there constantly was a military sea lift command ship called the USNS Bridge. And the bridge, like the Reagan, became was contaminated by radiation. Now with the Reagan, you have sailors trained to decontaminate, because we trained to fight nuclear wars, as crazy as that might sound. So we have people who can know how to decontaminate, we have ELTs which can detect radiation, they know how to get rid of it, etc. So when the Reagan was contaminated, the crew knew what to do. They weren't they weren't scared. Uh there were no long-lasting health effects in the last study to the crew.
SPEAKER_02Good.
SPEAKER_00Different story with the bridge. They're not trained to fight in a nuclear war. And so trying to figure out how to get that ship decontaminated was it became a huge issue. It basically sat in Sasebo Harbor, which is one of our bases. We have two major naval bases, Yakusuka, which is near Tokyo, and Sasebo. It sat in Sasebo until they could find a contractor willing to come into the ship and decontaminate it so it could come back to Bremerton, Washington. And you can imagine in Japan, after Fukushima, uh contractors who could decontaminate were few and and far between, but they eventually did find a contractor and were able to decontaminate that that ship.
SPEAKER_05I just think like um, I would think maybe a country like Japan would have the resources when there's a natural disaster. To me, it makes a little bit more sense that Indonesia would need a little bit more support. And maybe I'm just being really, you know, I'm I'm sounding uneducated about this, but I was a little surprised that we were helping Japan. I just feel like they I was surprised that they needed so much, you know, humanitarian aid.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, well, Japan is a first world country. It is the country in this world, planet Earth, the killer earth, most prepared to handle a natural disaster. Right. The Japanese build seawalls in preparation for tsunamis.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00They have the highest engineering standards in the world for earthquakes. Every town, if you know anyone who's gone over to Japan and taught school there, a lot of Americans like to do that. One of the first things you do when you get to a Japanese school is you have the tsunami earthquake drill, and you know where to go. If you're on the coast, you know where the high ground is. And that, you know, that helped in terms of the number of people who were killed. Okay, 19,000 people were killed in Japan. The earthquake and tsunami were this pretty much the same as a little little less than what you saw in Indonesia. Indonesia, if you include all the Southeast Asian. countries was over 250,000. Yeah. They were they that's the difference. It's right. You know, the the cost in human lives. Now for a country like Japan, 19,000 people is you know it's a tragedy that they're gonna that that's going to hurt for hundreds of years. But it is nowhere near the scale of what happened in Indonesia or the northern island of Sumatra where they lost 160 people like that. Yeah. So so that's that's the difference. And really what made Japan such a big deal is is Fukushima.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And I can I can talk about that later on in the in the pod.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And just one more note on Japan don't don't they have like the most sophisticated tsunami warning system in the world?
SPEAKER_00Is that something they not only have a warning system but better yet they actually train for it. So if you live um if you live in a village on the coast you not only know what that sound is but where to go. And they actually build schools and government buildings typically on a in a tsunami safe area high a high point. Yeah if that if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04It does yeah and I think like going back to your point um in the southeast uh Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004 you know from my research a lot of people didn't even know it was a tsunami at the time they were just like some of them look the locals somewhat did but there were also a lot of tourists involved too but a lot of those people weren't they didn't know where to go so one of the other things about Indonesia which is very sad is that this it's a it's a it's a conservative Muslim country the large um largest Muslim country in the world and Sumatra itself is very gendered in terms of division of labor.
SPEAKER_00So women typically worked in the home raising children doing other things that could be done in the home men worked outside of the home so the vast majority of people wiped out during that tsunami were people or women and children who are trapped in homes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah so sad um all right well this is so amazing do you want to start with like a particular um uh natural disaster and kind of tell us some stories on that one and then we can you know go to another one um like do you have one that you want to start with I could go chronologically or I could or I could just we don't have to go chronologically two the Indonesia and Katrina occurred approximately the same period.
SPEAKER_05Oh I didn't even like put that together actually I'm I'm really excited to talk about Katrina so let's if we start with that that would be great and I think that was our first episode ever right it was our first episode well yeah I think it was Katrina yeah it was so katrina um okay it's the it was the one of the biggest most costly disasters in the United States it um the hurricane basically ran its course from the 23rd to the 31st of August 2005 it laid waste to about 9000 square miles of land uh along the Gulf Coast from from Alabama to Louisiana it didn't kill a lot of people it only killed 1,833 people despite the fact that there were storm surges as high as 27 feet above normal above what above normal sea level from Mobile Alabama to New Orleans and it was really the the levee failure the levee failure uh that which which basically flooded 80% of New Orleans that resulted in the the largest loss of life.
SPEAKER_00Yes and some of those people if you look at that 1833 figure a lot of those people were old elders sick people vulnerable people who could not evacuate who had preexisting conditions so that if they were deprived of medicine electricity these types of things would not last very long um so the storm also it it created this huge debris field it uh over a over 118 million cubic yards of debris and as far as oil it dumped 7.4 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf which is about two-thirds the amount of the Exxon Valdees uh in 1989 which was the which was the uh the worst oil spill in american history yeah yeah so that and then the third issue that is it it closed the Mississippi River in the port of New Orleans so for supply chain and it and shut down the oil refineries in that area so the oil refineries are vital in terms of energy throughout the US the Mississippi waterway and the port of Louisiana incredibly important for logistics across across the country so one of the things one of the things that the Navy as well as the Coast Guard can do very well is salvage and survey we have UAVs that can go underwater find wrecks find debris uh so survey and then if we find something we can get it out so the the Navy and the Coast Guard along with actually New Orleans has a very robust civilian salvage sector as well which the Navy tried to employ to the extent possible because we weren't there to take away people's jobs and income but that helped get that port up to speed and the waterways quickly which was very important as far as the overall effect on the on the US not just the localized effect as far as what the the Navy and the Marine Corps all all the services were involved but the Navy and Marine Corps they sent 12 warships nine logistics ships from the MSc military sea lift command 68 naval aircraft and over 10 00 and a very large group of those sailors came from the CB we have a CB base which are naval engineers in Gulfport Mississippi and so Gulfport and this is a very big theme of mine was both a victim and a first responder. I remember this yeah so those seabs they had to dig themselves out and dig their families out first and then they deployed to try to help the local communities and even then they were still there were still major issues with you know where do our families live are they you know are they getting enough to eat do they have a place to sleep those types of issues but at as far as the big ships we have had a nuclear power powered aircraft carrier Truman was there the Iwo Jima which is a landing platform dock and the baton which is an amphibian assault ship these what we call amphibs are multi-purpose ships they usually have a helicopter a flight deck which can be used for helicopters now the F-35s can land their um hairy or jump jets um but but mainly helicopters that's what you don't need jets for disasters you need helicopters and they also have what's called um these amphips also have many of them not all of them have well decks that are filled with smaller uh boats what they we call LCMs like landing craft like you would see in the movie D-Day but also uh larger landing craft called LCACs which can carry multiple vehicles equipment basically can carry 130 000 pounds per load to the shore or wherever and those things now by comparison a an essay an H60 which is the Navy version of the Blackhawk they can at most the very most if you get rid of all the military equipment they can carry about 9000 pounds so ships can carry a lot a lot more stuff than helicopters and so if you could get in the in in the Mississippi area there are a lot of places where you could actually get those not so much LCACs because there's a lot of debris hovercrafts don't like debris but you could get the LCMs which are smaller um motorized landing craft to various nooks and crannies along the along the Gulf coast to deliver vital supplies um we also sent a hospital ship and I can I can talk about that a bit later I want to mention the Coast Guard response as well because we shouldn't be talking about Katrina without talking about the Coast Guard.
SPEAKER_05I want to so just for clarification so with who would be responding first or does it really depend on the circumstances?
SPEAKER_00Okay that's that's an issue that I I get into in the book but basically I'm gonna put it in a nutshell federal forces fall under what they call Title 10 of the US code which means they have limited ability to act domestically there's also a law called Posse Comitatus which basically forbids the military to be involved the federal military in law enforcement and there's another law called the Stafford Act Stafford natural yeah this this has to do with natural disasters but basically the Stafford Act says that for Title X forces to be used the governor has to request of the state has to request these forces from the president the president then assigns FEMA to to make their request formally they the FEMA appoints a an official in charge of the operation does when when it responds that the Title 10 it works for FEMA so and in it's the same in foreign response it's the State Department who asks the country hey do you need help and then the State Department through the USAID the ambassador Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance they run the show as far as the US response so in neither case is the U.S. military the lead sled dog. Gotcha now domestically there are certain types of forces that can operate domestically the National Guard when it operates under what they call state authority or Title 32 authority it can be federalized and operate under Title 10 but for disasters it generally operates under Title 32 because then it has law enforcement uh powers so if you've ever been into an area that is has undergone a riot for example and you see National Guard right they can arrest you they have they have they have the full power to arrest okay they generally would rather have local police do it but they actually have the power to arrest another group another group that has the power to arrest federal law enforcement powers is the Coast Guard which operates under something called Title 14. These these numbers probably are irrelevant.
SPEAKER_05It's okay I didn't know the coast I didn't know the Coast Guard could arrest you.
SPEAKER_00I uh yeah the the Coast Guard has law enforcement um powers in the maritime environment yeah so in what so because they'll patrol the boats over here in Maine. Yeah you have a six pack of beer on your boat.
SPEAKER_04Exactly that's right I know about this hey I'm not driving so she's not driving but she's drinking on the boat all the time no I think you can have there's no habeas corpus when you're on a boat.
SPEAKER_00The Coast Guard can pull up and get on your boat and search the boat. Right there's no they don't need a warrant. Wow no I didn't know that no they don't need a I guess I've never been like I need a warrant for your yeah interesting the the the ocean environment's a different environment so yes uh so anyway the the Coast Guard was basically when it when it appeared that the that there would be a storm although they didn't know where it would hit they were ready to surge forces in fact one commander said I want it to look like apocalypse now but with orange helicopters. Wow so they surged 29 cutters 86 aircraft 131 uh small boats about 46 percent of the service's aircraft and over 10 percent of its active duty personnel and they rescued 6000 people wow the vast vast vast vast majority of people the navy the marine corps the national guard also rescued people but the vast majority were rescued by the Coast Guard the interesting thing about the Coast Guard is they don't count there was they they were they were evacuating people in some places by boat they don't count that as rescue what they count as a rescue is someone coming down in a helicopter and hoisting you up.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_04So the number would be I can imagine just you know that it would be the Coast Guard because there's so much flooding I mean it's not like a helicopter has like a place to really land. I mean I'm sure the little boats like had to go in and rescue all those people so that makes a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_00The 6000 number is my number it's both boats and helicopters helicopter uh coast guard helicopters rescued about 12000 of that 6000 number interesting and crazy that's crazy I I actually have some stories about I can I can jump to one of the one of the stories the first rescue it was by a guy named Lawrence Noodles Nettles and he's a Coast Guard that's I love that name that's an amazing name he's a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. Now the Coast Guard rescue swimmers are like the seals of the Coast Guard the training and physical standards are off the charts. I can't imagine you have to be able to swim you have to be able to lift people you have to be trained medically it's it's it's ridiculous and you you have to be willing to to go and do all this stuff basically be dropped in a dark ocean in the middle of a hurricane oh wow yeah with all your hair that's so imagine being flown out 50 miles off the coast in the middle of a hurricane and dropped in the ocean to rescue somebody okay so that's that's the Coast Guard and in in New Orleans they had to operate with chainsaws rotary chainsaws and fire axes because they often had to to uh saw holes into roofs and chop holes into roofs to get people so I'll I'll go back to to to Lawrence nettles okay so I say these people basically confronted all sorts of dangers okay power lines um contaminate water contaminated from sewage uh chemicals they even faced angry looters I was just gonna say looters yeah that was a big problem or and that was a problem with this whole law enforcement thing so we we we we used we utilized the 82nd airborne in New Orleans which was yeah it's one of our elite paratrooper divisions wow tough tough people yeah and um these people had to come in unarmed in an area surrounded by looters where people are firing guns and whatnot so their detachments actually had to be guarded by either Coast Guard cuttermen uh or National Guard that was humiliating to a somewhat humiliating they they took it with a grain of salt but it was somewhat humiliating humiliating because this is the most lethal toughest person out there division in the US Army so why weren't they why didn't they have why weren't they armed? Because of it goes back to history uh after this in in 1876 the Congress passed a law called the Posse Comitatus Act which basically it was designed to end the military occupation of the South and Congress because that was somewhat political it was a political hot potato they decided that from thence forward uh US troops would not be used in a law enforcement role okay okay gotcha but National Guard could Coast Guard can okay and there are other federal agencies so fish and wildlife those are armed National Park Services armed all those people um yeah Bureau of Land Management a myriad of the the customs and border protection the border patrol all of these people were there so there were other people armed yeah yeah came in and filled that that that role I think that there was looting and and I heard stories from the Coast Guard what the Coast Guard would do is when they were ferrying people they would put a big barrel by the ferry and say leave your weapons in this barrel no questions asked but if you cross the river or we we move you across the river and we find weapons on you we're gonna arrest you wow and the Coast Guard set up security it actually set up snipers didn't have any problem they were not too keen about challenging the Coast Guard. Yeah would I I would hope probably for the best so uh but also a lot of these Coast Guard like even the unarmed uh pararescue folks uh rescue swimmers there's one woman who basically she went down into a group of angry people and she just yelled at them said look I'm I'm not taking I'm either we're gonna go women and children first and then everybody else and I want everybody to behave themselves and she's you know she's this 20 20 something year old female rescue swimmer but she had this command presence
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00And she was trained to use that command presence. She didn't have to pull a gun or do anything like that.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00She calm the crowd down.
SPEAKER_04Oh wow.
unknownGood.
SPEAKER_04Wow. What a bad. That's awesome. I know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She was the first, and I her name escapes me right now. It's in it's in the book. She was the first Coast Guard rescue swimmer, and she deployed to um to New Orleans. That was her first big deployment.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I love that. That's so cool. That is amazing.
SPEAKER_00Um, I think that's one of the things we're talking about women. Um women were involved in all the operations that I focus on. And uh there are a lot of women in the in the helicopter community. And some of our some of our best, well, in the whole aviation, some of our best pilots are women. Woohoo! That's awesome. In fact, I've you know I've interviewed people about combat situations. And one Air Force squadron, I interviewed the squadron commander. It's like, well, we we we sent one of our female pilots because she was the best bomber.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, that's amazing. Whenever I think of like an awesome female pilot, I think of the girl from Avatar. What's her name, Vanessa? That we love. She worked at the actress. So this is what happened.
SPEAKER_05This is what happened. We go down tangents. Sorry. Really irrelevant tangents.
SPEAKER_00We have to entertain people here. It's not just yeah, not just boring history.
SPEAKER_04No, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'll think. Okay, so Larry Larry uh want to tell his story. So on August 29th, his the pilot in the aircraft, Lieutenant Dave Johnson, hovered his aircraft above trees and power lines and rains, rain and 50-knot winds. 50 knot winds are practically that that's serious stuff, especially if you're trying to fly a helicopter. Okay, they're attempting to rescue a mother, an infant, a grandmother, and two dogs from a small boat. His aircraft lowered rescue swimmer Lawrence Noodles nettles 100 feet through trees and power lines. On two occasions in the rescue, downdrafts nearly smashed the aircraft into the trees and power lines. But Johnson and his co-pilot managed to recover just feet from the trees or power lines. The first hoist successfully rescued the mother, infant, and two dogs. That's how strong nettles was. And he's a small guy. The second hoist raised the grandmother, but on the third hoist, a gus snagged the cable in a tree, trapping nettles. The winch operator, electric electrical technician Warren Lambeth, he's the hoist operator, managed to serve out enough slack to allow nettles to break free of the branches. This was the first Coast Guard rescue of the operation.
SPEAKER_02Whoa.
SPEAKER_00So just about all of the training that the Coast Guard subjects its people to. So flying in hurricane force winds. Can't imagine that. Operating, you know, these you know, these hoists are going all over the place, being able to deal with that without killing anyone.
SPEAKER_04And then the power lines going crazy everywhere. Like it's just they're really, really truly risking their lives for people. And it's amazing what they do.
SPEAKER_00Bruce Jones, who was the commander of the Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, he's a Coast Guard captain. Uh, he flew some of these early missions. And he says it was pretty stressful at night because there were no lights over the city. The towers were unlit, cell phone towers, radio towers, power lines, all the things that would normally be lit at night or unlit. And of course, by nature of the mission, you're flying very, very low. So fortunately, on most nights, the night vision conditions were pretty good. You could pick up cell phones and power lines on your goggles if you were very alert. Another hazard, especially as the mission progressed, were helicopters. With up to 20 helicopters in the air at the same time and very little command and control, the potential for a mid-air collision was real. Pilots soon figured out that the best way to watch out for other helicopters was to look for ripples of water underneath them. The concentric circles of water created by rotor watch were often more visible than the helicopters themselves from certain angles of approach. The fact that no mid-air collisions occurred is a testament to the expertise of the military pilots from all the branches who flew.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, I have chills right now. I had no idea. So that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00These pilots, male, female, also had to fly in this intensely hot, humid weather. So when they landed, one of the first things they would do is they would get out of the helicopter and drink a bottle of pediolite. Which is an electrolyte replacement for the we know all about it, John. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. It's yeah. Okay. So that was to prevent them from literally passing out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean, especially after the stress of flying those and like almost dying at every turn. Um, I didn't even think about the cell phone towers being out. That's just terrifying. Or, like, yeah, the possibility of crashing into another helicopter and the fact that you had to look at the ripples in the water. That's like, that's so insane, like, and intense to me. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00And the operating environment in a humanitarian operation for helicopters is basically similar to war. They're really stressing the pilots, the air crews, the enlisted maintainers, the people that maintain the aircraft. And sometimes accidents do happen. There was a U.S. helicopter that crashed in Indonesia. Nobody fortunately was injured too badly in that crash. No one died. Okay. Um, there was an Australian helicopter, however, in Indonesia that crashed where there were people who died in that in that incident.
SPEAKER_04Like crashed into another helicopter or crashed like into debris or something?
SPEAKER_00Crashed, you know, crashed into a mountain or on the ground. Oh, okay. That's awful. Awful. And when the helicopters land in many of the like in Indonesia, some of the landing areas are dusty, so it kicks up a dust cloud. This happened in Japan as well. In Japan, there was snow, so it sometimes kicked up a snow cloud.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And you can't see, and it's easy to get vertigo. And I'll read you an example of um this is Navy commander Robert Bennett, who flew an MH 53, which is it's a very large helicopter, it looks like a big beetle. Um and he flew. So because of the size of that helicopter, it was more appropriate for hauling supplies than pick plucking people off rooftops because the wind alone that that thing produces, it's just it's it's insane. Um so you don't really you don't generally try to hoist people off of roofs with those. So he decided that on their, it was, I think their first mission that they would fly to Alexandria, Louisiana, pick up food and water. Uh, because no forklifts were available. Basically, the air crew spent two hours loading their own, breaking down pallets and loading their own helicopters. This is in hot, humid conditions.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's a if you've ever seen an MH 53, that's a big, that's a big helicopter. That's like loading a big U-Haul truck in water. Wow. I feel like I can picture it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's like a flying U-Haul truck.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00And so they loaded 16,000 pounds. That's heavy. That's more than your, you know, your typical workout for sure. Yeah, my gosh. Yeah, that's uh that's that's pretty pretty serious stuff. And then they got gas, and he reached into his pocket and he didn't have his government credit card. Oh no. He bought seven thousand dollars worth of gas. And so uh a Coast Guard officer said, Here, just use mine.
SPEAKER_05Oh, good. Thank I was like, there's there's gotta be like a quick solution for this.
SPEAKER_00It probably took 10 years to reconcile that charge, but I'm sure.
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, I like what would you do if he did if the Coast Guard um guy didn't help him because like your credit card probably would have maxed out at like what? I don't know. Yeah, seven grand as well.
SPEAKER_00Back in 2005, exactly $7,000 credit limits.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00So wow. The first thing he did was he got on the common frequency and asked, Where you know, where do I go with this load? And they said, go to the um, they told head to the I-Ten Clover Clover Leaf. So that the the convention center, the I-10 clover leaf, and this and the superdome were the three areas where a lot of refugees from New Orleans were I I don't want to say shelter, but they were they were sheltering basically.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But that was way too crowded for an MH 53 to land. So he flew down I-10 and unloaded his cargo there. He then flew to a university hospital for another delivery, and this is all again, the crew, they land. Their crew has to unload all this stuff. They don't have forklift.
SPEAKER_03Right. And gosh, that's a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was midnight. Uh it was midnight by this time. I had guys on the windows calling things that posed an immediate hazard to the aircraft. We didn't have night vision goggles. We saw a car in an otherwise empty parking lot and carefully descended like the helicopter scene in Jurassic Park. He remembered his co-vividly remembered. Yes, an amazing. Every helicopter pilot I've ever interviewed talks about that scene.
SPEAKER_05It's actually Vanessa's favorite movie. My favorite movie, and I love that whole scene.
SPEAKER_04We've talked about Jurassic Park several times on this, so it's like that you brought it up. It's so amazing. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Because, anyways. You know, helicopter pilots will say, other than that scene, every other movie where there's a helicopter, inevitably it crashes.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that's one movie where the helicopter didn't crash. That's true. That is true. So um we we got power lines, we got we got light poles, trees, cars turned on their side, and the XO, that's Bennett, and I are just squeaking it in there. This is the Jurassic Park landing. Fearing, fearing that the aircraft might be overrun by rioters. They told the aircrew, just kick out all the stuff so we can lift off because we don't want to get swamped by desperate people. After unloading another 5,000 pounds of supplies, the aircraft delivered their remaining food and water to Naval Air Station New Orleans. They refueled and headed 70 miles offshore to the bataan. It's one of our ships. As the weather began to close in, Bennett experienced flight, an automatic flight control system failure, which makes landing very, very difficult. It was painful, said Bennett. Both he and his co-pilot pilot uh experienced vertigo when they got into the clouds. I had to get a crewman in the cockpit calling out altitudes and monitoring the gyro. I punched out of the glue goo, the low cloud cover, at about 500 feet and milked my way in there. I was in the left seat, which was poor planning because one should be in the right seat for a landing on this type of ship.
SPEAKER_02Oh man.
SPEAKER_00After that mission, Bennett and Brake were physically and mentally spent. Bennett just stayed in his seat for five minutes collecting his thoughts. I was the new guy, said Brake, his co-pilot. And I'm just like, wow, this was my first flight with the with the executive officer ever, and only my third flight with the with the squadron. That was just wild.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I uh it's like go ahead. Vertigo is essentially altitude confusion. You have no idea where you are in relation to the ground.
SPEAKER_00You have no idea of gravity. So it I've I'm a skier, and it's happened to me. If you're skiing in the fog, you can sometimes get vertigo where you don't know where you can't see the ground, you can't see the sky, you have no visual reference. So you don't your brain just gets becomes mush and you get confused, and you basically have to just lie down in the snow until your brain gets its act together.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but flying a helicopter, oh, that's a pretty thing.
SPEAKER_05I think the the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, the pilot, because they were in the fog, he got vertigo, and that's why he got confused, and that's why he that's why they crashed into the side of the hill.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, that's that's there's there's a YouTube video of a military of a black hawk that landing somewhere in Utah, I think it's National Guard, and it looks like the pilot experienced vertigo and tipped the helicopter over.
SPEAKER_04Wow, did it crash?
SPEAKER_00I it it was landing and it's sort of the blades went into the snow. I don't know what you know, it's your typical YouTube video. You don't know if anyone survived or what the end story was.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, just the video, but yeah, vertigo and vertigo is always a problem.
SPEAKER_00One one pilot, her name is Mary Robinson. She told me, you know, pilots were very, we're a very pessimistic bunch. And we're always thinking about what could go wrong. She's a an engineer from the Naval Academy, so she's always calculating weight loads, looking at wind speed, looking at humidity. Her brain is just like this computer. And she said, because if you focus her words, if you focus on the awesomeness, so rescuing people, helping people, doing good things, you're gonna you're going to crash. Oh god. So in the moment, you think you, and this is training too, you focus on the specific things you need to focus on to survive in a helicopter.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the technical stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's definitely not for me, but I'm glad it's for other people for sure.
SPEAKER_00And they had to, every time they landed and picked up a load, they had to carefully do all these calculations. How much fuel do we have? What's the humidity? What's the wind speed? What are all these things? Can we get from point A to point B? And her husband, this is in Japan, her husband Aaron flew with the other squadron. Um, and he was flying medicine, children's medicine to a location in Japan. And he got a call on the radio saying, hey, the the the plume, the radiation plume from Fukushima just shifted.
SPEAKER_02Oh no.
SPEAKER_00And the easy thing for him to do was just return to the ship.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But again, that's not what he did. He he he got his crew chief up and he talked to his co-pilot and they made a bunch of calculations, and they decided that by flying a certain route that they could get the medicine in to those people. That's sort of the the can-do spirit of the military, the way they were willing to go the extra mile to fulfill the mission. He got the he got it to those kids and they landed and they did the radiation checks. And as he put it, he didn't even lose a knee board. Because typically, when you when you land, when you when they were operating off the east coast of Japan, they would come in and they would check everything for radiation, and they would say, Oh, your boot has radiation, put it in a bag. Your knee pad, your knee board has radiation or your gloves. And her her uh Mary said, I I went into the XO at one point and said, Sir, if we to keep doing this, we're we're not gonna have anything to wear. Literally. But Mary wasn't even concerned about her, she was more concerned about her maintenance crew that was working out in the cold weather. Yeah, that's what was keeping her up at night, and also the fact that the the Air Force D fac, which is defense short for dining facility, was charging, was more expensive than the Navy D fact. So her her enlisted folks were having to pay more money out of pocket to eat. So that those were the and uh to to show how unselfish she was, and then so she would try to help her enlisted people out financially, and on top of that, she found out that what the lot of the Japanese really wanted, because they had a lot of the communities had supplies for disaster, they had stockpile water, they had food supplies, they and the Japanese were really good if if the helicopter landed and they would hand in Japanese what the helicopter had. If the people didn't need the stuff, they would say go to the next village. Oh wow, there was no no hoarding, no selfishness there. But Mary, what she discovered that the Japanese wanted were what was candy and cigarettes. Yeah, so she would go to the Navy, the Air Force Exchange, and buy that stuff with her own money and give it out.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's so sweet.
SPEAKER_04That is really very I'd want a cigarette if I was over there.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think I would start smoking if I went through that.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Yeah. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00Especially if you're a smoker, you you're you're suffering from the trauma and also nickel with that. I mean, oh, that would be me.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly who what I would be doing.
SPEAKER_04So oh man. Oh man, that's incredible though.
SPEAKER_05Um, I wanted to ask you, going back to Katrina, there was so much like negativity about FEMA's involvement in their response. And I was just wondering if you had any insight into what that was all about. Because like during our research, too, it was like, you know, the Ray Nagan, I think he was the mayor of no of and I don't know, it's just like there was so much negativity around everyone's response. Hey guys, I think this is a good spot to leave you, a little cliffhanger, until part two. Isn't John super interesting? Kat and I, we say it in part two, I think, but we could listen to him just tell stories about all of these natural disasters for hours. So uh next time we start with John's explanation about what went down with FEMA during Hurricane Katrina, and we will dive into the 2011 uh tsunami in Japan and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Southeast Asia. So, catch you later. So the future doesn't exist yet until you go through it.
SPEAKER_02Fuck your future.