The hurricane popped up suddenly in the Gulf of Mexico, moved along the Gulf Coast and eventually made landfall in Pensacola, Fla., and drove inland. The Eighth Coast Guard District—headquartered in New Orleans, but covering all or part of 26 states throughout the Gulf Coast and heartland of America—stood up its incident management team to respond to search and rescue needs, navigation system repairs, environmental spills and requests for assistance from other agencies.

Except one thing was missing: a real hurricane. This was a drill—one of many the US Coast Guard has performed this year in preparation for hurricane season. Predictions are that in 2008 the Gulf Coast has a 36 percent chance of having a Category 3,4 or 5 hurricane make landfall. The East Coast, including panhandle Florida, has a 37 percent chance. The entire US coastline faces a 60 percent chance.

Hurricane seas can be particularly deadly. The Coast Guard is responsible for marine safety, security and environmental protection. Its job is to make sure people on ships are safe and ready, that ships have extra mooring lines so they don’t tear away from docks, and that other ships move out from port well before the storm lands. It’s also responsible for search and rescue operations on the water after a hurricane has stormed through an area.

This year, the Coast Guard has at its helm someone who is drilling home the importance of preparedness, someone who has seen firsthand the results of lack of preparation.

That person is Adm. Thad Allen, who assumed the position of 23rd commandant of the Coast Guard on May 25, 2006. Allen witnessed the catastrophic effects a hurricane can have on a city when preparedness was not made a priority. President Bush appointed him as the principal federal official to coordinate federal resources after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Many thought he was a breath of fresh air blowing into a situation lacking authority and leadership. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was responsible for leading Coast Guard forces as commander of the Atlantic Area and US Maritime Defense Zone Atlantic.

Allen said in his 2008 State of the Coast Guard address in February that there are growing threats and challenges, including population density of coastal regions and more radical weather patterns that increase risk from summer hurricanes and West Coast winter storms. Other threats include terrorism and transnational threats like illegal immigration and sea-based drug trafficking.

“We are prepared to adapt in order to ensure the safety, security and stewardship of this nation and the world’s maritime commons,” Allen said. “Taken individually, these threats and opportunities challenge us programmatically and place demands on our capabilities and competencies. But collectively, these conditions together, with the need to improve our legacy business systems and practices, have created what I have called a call to action.”

Allen has now made interagency exercises, training and cooperation with other agencies a priority at the Coast Guard. He has set a process in motion to reorganize the Coast Guard to enable it to be more agile and responsive.

According to Coast Guard officers in the New York area, Allen’s call to action has been taken to heart.

New York preparations

In the New York area, the Coast Guard began homing in on hurricane season in April, identifying which portions of its plans needed updating based on lessons learned in the past year.

“We try to use that national scope to be able to capture those lessons that they’ve learned the hard way and maybe we can do things better here,” said Lt. Cmdr. Ernie Morton, chief of the Coast Guard’s contingency planning and exercise branch, with authority over New Jersey, New York City and north up the Hudson River to Albany.

The Coast Guard was a symbol of hope and heroism during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, when it deployed aircraft and boats to New Orleans and other areas of Louisiana and Mississippi to help rescue many people who, for whatever reason, did not—or could not—evacuate on their own. Many of those in need were sitting on their roofs, with floodwater rising around them.

The Coast Guard’s swift response contrasted starkly with the complete breakdown of communication and organization in New Orleans’ response plan—and that of agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The government has moved to remedy that. Effective as of March 22, all agencies playing a response role during any type of incident are to follow the National Response Framework (NRF)—a guide to the nation’s all-hazard responses, whether from a biological or cyberattack, a food emergency or natural disaster. Previous plans were rolled up into the NRF, based on lessons learned from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The plan details how communities, federal and state governments, private sector and nongovernmental organizations act together for any given situation.

“No agency acts on its own anymore,” said Capt. Walter Reger, chief of planning for the Eighth Coast Guard District, headquartered in New Orleans. “The biggest lesson learned from everybody down here was the need to strengthen our partnerships and sharing information with other agencies down here that have a role with restoring the communities to normality.”

Around the districts

The Eighth District, as the Coast Guard’s largest, is well accustomed to nasty storms. It stretches from the Appalachian Mountains and Chattahoochee River in the east, to the Rocky Mountains in the west, and from the US-Mexico border and the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border in North Dakota. It’s responsible for protecting the 1,200 miles of coastline and 10,300 miles of inland navigable waterways.

Because the City of New Orleans is below sea level and surrounded by water, the Coast Guard there is always eyeing potential areas of flooding should a storm hit, particularly the city’s weakened levee system.

“Depending on whether there should be another storm the size of Katrina—that would still be a problem,” Reger said, even though many improvements have been made.

The Eighth District is also responsible for maritime safety along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which together form engines of commerce through the Port of New Orleans. The Coast Guard plays a large role in ensuring functionality of bridges, locks, dams and other structures that could be affected by a storm. “We play a big role in keeping the maritime transportation system moving along,” he noted.

One responsibility unique to this district is overseeing the nation’s offshore energy production facilities—all of which are located in the Eighth District. “That presents a unique challenge in terms of our ability to cooperate with other federal agencies and communicate the need to evacuate” when necessary, explained Reger.

Oil platform owners have the primary responsibility for the security and condition of the facilities—that includes evacuations. The Coast Guard warns when potential threatening storm systems move in and will manage search and rescue operations if needed.

The district maintains communication with agencies such as FEMA, as well as local governments, on a regular basis—not just when a storm, or any other incident, is about to occur.

The Fifth District, stationed in Portsmouth, Va., is home to the Atlantic Area Command Center, which coordinates homeland security, law enforcement, and rescue missions that occur on the high seas across various districts. For example, if a hurricane is coming into Miami—the Seventh District—and the Coast Guard command center there is forced to relocate, it may move up to Portsmouth to resume control of post-hurricane Guard activities. Or the Atlantic command would deploy aircraft and aviation assets from other districts to the Miami area.

“As their parent command, we obviously will provide them with any assistance they need or any resources that are required,” said Lt. Chris White, the assistant chief of the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area Command Center and the Fifth District Command Center.

When a storm is coming in, the Fifth District—like any other Coast Guard district—warns those on the water about the pending weather activity. It issues broadcast notices to mariners via radio broadcast from land and from the sea or air via long-range, fixed-wing aircraft—to increase the range. The Coast Guard most of the time can come through ravaged areas only after the storm has passed through, so it urges everyone to be smart and listen to boating conditions and serious weather warnings.

“We see this time and time again—one of the things people tend to overlook is the weather and the forecasted weather,” White explained. “You can imagine if there’s a major hurricane upon us, we’re not going to be able to get underway or get aircraft airborne—the parameters or environmental conditions are so extreme, we can’t operate. We have to wait for the storm to pass, too … before we can actually respond.”

Severe storms may force the Coast Guard to relocate district command centers, aircraft, small boats and large cutters either north or south to avoid the eye of the storm.

During some storms, the Guard does find people out on their boats who thought they could weather the storm, but, White said, “the human body isn’t capable of withstanding those conditions.” However, “the boat, for the most part, makes it through okay.”

The Coast Guard in New York oversees all ships in the Port of New York and 12 miles offshore and works with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as well.

“They [Port Authority] understand that we’re looking out for safety and security and also maintaining the maritime transportation system and keeping things running so they can get cargo in and out,” said Morton. “They’re very cooperative with that sort of thing and work very well with us and understand when we have to take action.”

Come June 1, when the Atlantic hurricane season starts, the New York Coast Guard reminds port workers and mariners that they need to make storm preparation a priority and think about how they will move ships where they need to be to keep their businesses running during a storm, but to also keep their people safe. The Vessel Tracking Center keeps track of every ship or boat within the port using cameras, radio and other technology to provide safety guidance and advice to all major commercial traffic. Mobile communication trailers are ready in case the main communications hub gets flooded or is otherwise not operational.

The New York State and city emergency management offices, the Coast Guard and FEMA together will execute a hurricane preparedness exercise scheduled for this month.

The Guard is also working with commercial ferry operators, New York and New Jersey authorities, New Jersey Transit, tugboats and others to develop a coordinated plan to execute during a crisis. These boats played vital roles during and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when people wanted to be anywhere but on the island. During the blackout of 2003, masses of people went to ferry terminals to leave, but they couldn’t tell which boat was going where.

“Some issues came out of that that we tried to address—how do we direct people to get to the right boat so they get to where they need to go?” Morton said. The question is particularly acute when hundreds of thousands of people could be storming the docks. “It’s definitely a challenge,” he added.

Analysis

Even though many saw the Coast Guard’s often life-saving actions during Katrina on television, Guard officials are quick to point out they do such search and rescue operations on a regular basis—luckily, not always on such a wide scale.

“It’s been well documented we responded valiantly” during Katrina, said White in Virginia. “But that’s what we do. The US Coast Guard is the best in the world at search and rescue. So it’s no surprise to me that we were able to provide that type of response.”

The commandant is determined to make sure the Coast Guard remains the premier rescue service. “He’s taken a lot of that to heart. Preparedness has taken a major push in the Coast Guard—making sure all our people are ready, trained and have the tools and equipment to be prepared,” Morton said of Allen.

As an example, Morton pointed out that the New York contingency planning office consisted of only five people when he took the job in 2006. It now has 21. That same focus has spread throughout the entire organization.

“The Coast Guard has always been focused on preparedness … to make sure we’re as prepared as we can be for whatever eventuality,” Reger added. “Basically, our motto, ‘semper paratus’ - always prepared—reflects the culture of our organization.” HST