19th Anniversary Of Hurricane Katrina

today marks an important day in hurricane history on this day 19 years ago Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast the Category 3 hurricane had sustained winds of 140 M an hour it caused extensive flooding in and around New Orleans and it also caused major damage in Mississippi including at keyler Air Force Base the home of the 53rd weather reconnaissance Squadron of the Air Force also known as the hurricane Hunters forcing them to move operations during a critical time and now for a closer look at how Katrina affected the hurricane Hunters were joined by Lieutenant Colonel Shan cross from the hurricane Hunters can you believe it has been that many years I feel like it was just yesterday that I was on the operations floor dealing with Katrina as a cat 5 over the Gulf of Mexico goes by quick I woke up this morning just thinking about it it was 19 years ago exactly where I was uh you know I was one of the first crew members to actually fly into Katrina it's a long story I'll condense for you but uh when the unit picked up and left and went to Houston Texas I kind of got left behind uh no fault of anybody's but that's just the way it is sometimes when things were rapidly moving and I ended up riding out the storm about 40 miles north of here on a chicken farm uh it was me and my girlfri at the time and 50,000 chickens riding out Hurricane Katrina so it was uh it was quite a memorable event and I was right back here on the coast right after uh it made landfall and it was truly truly devastating it is a measurement of time here on the m Mississippi GF coast and I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that kler was so significantly affected because your operations continued smoothly what was that like trying to get everything adjusted to keep up on the rest of the very active season right that's a great point we all know how busy the 2005 season was but uh kler Air Force Base had a tremendous amount of uh difficulties getting back and up and running right after the storm so we had to work out of maretta Georgia and we were up there all the way till November of 2005 and throughout that deadly season you know this unit never missed a fix we were always on time and all of our reservists who some of them lost everything they own continued to work that storm season from Marietta Georgia uh just to make sure that we met the mission requirements and all the data was collected and sent it to experts in Miami Florida well Lieutenant Colonel it's probably not a surprise that you were able to handle that in some ways given the fact that you have to routinely move your planes to other locations can you talk about about how this hurricane season you've had to forward deploy to the Eastern Caribbean out to Hawaii how do you handle spreading all your resources that thin and that far and wide so great question we have uh 10 aircraft we've got about a 100 people in the squad and we are we have a handshake agreement with the National Hurricane Center that we can handle three storms or three different locations at one time the unit was just in Hawaii they uh came back yesterday that's three aircraft about 65 people total and parts everything it takes to sustain that 247 life cycle of flying the storms back to back but we're already gearing up to possibly go to the Caribbean this coming weekend our forward operating location there is St Croy in the US Virgin Island so we're moving we're getting a little busy right now moving and taking a look at these different systems that the customer asking us to do and we've had some busy Seasons since then um what has Katrina taught you about moving forward how have you changed operations since then well it really hasn't changed the way we operate as far as right here to 53rd but for the members of this the wing and the Squadron itself you we have to prepare way earlier than most people do because we in 16 hours we can be gone heading out to St Croy or to Hawai or what it takes to meet these missions so uh we just have to prepare a lot earlier well Lieutenant Colonel Sean cross with the 53rd weather reconnaissance Squadron your pilot with them thank you so much for joining us today thanks for having us on we appreciate it hard really is really is amazing that it's been 19 years since I was at the Hurricane Center doing that and we just are so thankful that they can do their job under difficult circumstances