Perspective:
A retired Coast Guard commandant recalls the journey to Katrina
The Coast Guard thrives in times of crisis because of the ability of its men and women to engage partners at the federal, state and the local level based on trust, writes retired Adm. Thad Allen as he looks back on the service’s response to Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago.
The call came at 10 a.m. on Labor Day, 5 September 2005, one week after Hurricane Katrina had made landfall on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. A distraught nation was trying to come to grips with the unfolding tragedy in New Orleans; anguished people on rooftops frantically waving to be rescued, deaths in nursing homes, flooded parking lots full of school buses, and the decimation of the Lower Ninth Ward due to a levee collapse.
It shocked the conscience of the country. Breakdowns of order, first in the Superdome and then in the Convention Center, underscored the desperation of those trapped in a city largely under water.
The call was from Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff at the direction of President George W. Bush. He directed me to go to New Orleans and assist FEMA Administrator Michael Brown in any way I could.
The call was not unexpected. Then serving as Coast Guard chief of staff, I had been contacted earlier by the senior military adviser to the secretary who advised me the issue was being discussed at the highest levels in the White House. He wanted to know if I were asked, would I accept the assignment to take full command of the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts? My wife reminded me that I had often said that my favorite definition of leadership is the ability to reconcile opportunity and competency. I was in.
What followed was an exhausting six months to first stabilize the response, conduct house-to-house searches, repair the damaged levees and drainage canals, remove water and debris, restore utilities, and restart the city.
Fifteen years later longterm recovery is still a work in progress, the history of the storm still being written.
There were too many Coast Guard heroes in the Katrina response to name. The most compact and cogent description of the Coast Guard’s performance can be found in the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the entire Service, “Responding with more than 4,500 personnel, 130 small boats, 4 cutters, and 60 aircraft to devastation and despair across more than 90,000 square miles and 6,400 miles of coastline, the Coast Guard rescued more than 33,000 people, began clean-up operations of 9.4 million gallons of oil, replaced and repaired over 1,800 aids to navigation, and most importantly provided hope to hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens through its proactive and vigorous actions.”
Looking back from the perspective of my new role as the Dr. James S. Tyler Distinguished Chair in Leadership Studies at the Coast Guard Academy’s Loy Institute for Leadership — and through the lens of leader development — I am reflecting on some extraordinary individual and team performances. I gained great insight and grew as a person and a leader during the Katrina response. During a press interview, I was once asked what experience in my background prepared me for Katrina. My answer was, “Every assignment I ever had beginning when I walked through the gates of the Coast Guard Academy in 1967.”
The challenge in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes was considerable. On Sept. 6 my helicopter, after overflying the city, landed at a makeshift landing zone by the Convention Center. While emergency repairs were underway to repair levees and drainage canals, the city was without power, potable water, and sewer. Large areas were still underwater.
By the end of that day I reached the conclusion that we — everyone — had been trying to solve the wrong problem for a week. Following emergency declarations by Bush, resources were pouring into the region, standard procedure following a hurricane.
But this wasn’t a standard hurricane.
With the collapse of the levees and drainage canals, the city was more like the victim of a weapon of mass destruction. Surrounding areas had lost continuity of government and with it the ability to receive and deploy resources where they were needed most and to manage those operations. My task was to create a structure that supported local leaders without assuming their authorities. It required a coalition of the willing, or at least non-objectors.
One lesson learned is that no complex problem — be it a natural or manmade disaster, pandemic, or cyberattack — can be addressed by a single entity, individual, agency, or company. Effective outcomes are co-produced based on trust, a clear objective and unity of effort. Today’s Coast Guard Academy’s Leader Development Program is centered on self-awareness and accountability as prerequisites for building and leading teams to create unity of effort.
That was the journey we all took together in New Orleans.
We hammered out a process to search the city and touch every structure to account for any missing or distressed persons and begin to deal with the difficult task of recovering the dead. To do that we divided the city into sectors and assigned each sector to a component of Lt. Gen. Russ Honore’s Joint Task Force and the Louisiana National Guard. The military forces provided access, security, logistical support, and communications to local law enforcement, who went door to door. Once created, this structure stabilized the immediate response in 72 hours.
While I had no legal authority to direct any state, local, or federal resources, my team was able to establish credibility and trust so that our advice and recommendations became the presumed way ahead. If a local leader or stakeholder complained, we revisited and changed plans as needed to satisfy their concerns. It wasn’t perfect but it worked.
I often get undeserved credit for the Coast Guard response to Katrina. The fact is, most of the rescues occurred before I arrived. My role transcended any individual agency. My charge was to make sense of what had happened, define the problem, and determine the right federal role in order to collectively create an art of the possible where none previously existed.
The Coast Guard thrives in times of crisis because of the ability of our men and women to engage partners at the federal, state and the local level based on trust. With the move in 1998 of the Officer Candidate School (college graduates and prior enlisted members), all officer accessions now pass through the gates of the Coast Guard Academy in New London. Their stories begin here, in this community.
Building leaders of character demands the indispensable skills of self-awareness and empathy, in short, emotional intelligence.
The Loy Institute of Leadership works with cadet and officer candidate programs among faculty, staff, coaches and the crew of the barque Eagle, to develop and deploy programs that build these competencies. My journey to Katrina began here in this community where you continue to support the development of Coast Guard officers. I look forward to seeing the central exhibit at the National Coast Guard Museum in New London, a helicopter suspended in the atrium commemorating the Service’s performance in responding to Hurricane Katrina.