[StBernard] 'Like John Wayne and the cavalry'

[Westley Annis]

'Like John Wayne and the cavalry'
Residents of a hard-hit parish in New Orleans say they'll never forget the
Canadians who came to the rescue
  
Allan Woods 
CanWest News Service 


Tuesday, August 29, 2006


ST. BERNARD, La. - Lehrman's Bar is a dark, smoky establishment that plays
loud country music and celebrates the fact it was the only business in St.
Bernard Parish not to miss a day of work when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf
Coast one year ago today.

Amid the loss of homes and livelihoods, it is a small point of pride for the
people living here.

But patrons are not too proud to step away from their bar stools, shake your
hand and tell you all about the group of 46 who came to their rescue.

They refer to the search-and-rescue crew from Vancouver by several names --
the Mounties, the Vancouver Royal Mounted Police -- but there is no question
about where the team came from and what its members did when they got to the
area that suffered the greatest flooding and some of the worst losses in the
storm.

"The whole metro area knows the Canadians were here first," said Henry
"Junior" Rodriguez, president of St. Bernard Parish. "We told them we hope
we never have to repay the favour."

It is difficult to overstate the gratitude felt in this small community,
once home to 67,500. The Canadians stayed only a week, but some swear it was
a month, or even two. Everyone who worked with them, or was rescued by them,
has their own story of those they call the "Heroes of the Storm."

Members of the Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue Team, known as Canada Task
Force One, first heard they might travel to southeastern Louisiana on
Tuesday, Aug. 30, once it became clear U.S. authorities were ill-prepared to
cope with the extensive damage and flooding.

The call came from the British Columbia Solicitor-General's office to ask if
they were operational and prepared to go, said Captain Tim Armstrong, the
team's head.

Twenty-four hours later they were on a chartered plane bound for Lafayette,
La., about 200 kilometres east of New Orleans.

On the day Katrina hit, the flooding came in from the east starting at 5
a.m. By 7:45 a.m., the levees protecting New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward
collapsed, sending water straight through the poor black neighbourhood and
west into St. Bernard Parish.

Thomas Stone, the parish's fire chief and a 28-year veteran, remembers being
pounded by Katrina, but thinking they might have avoided the worst after the
wind shifted slightly.

"Then I got a phone call saying there was water coming over the levees.
About 10 or 15 minutes later they called back and said they were on the
second floor and the water was up to their waist," he said from the same
second-storey office where he watched Katrina storm in.

"I remember going downstairs and seeing the water rolling in from Orleans
Parish. They were whitecaps, like you were at the beach watching a rough
surf. I'll never forget that."

After the storm passed, the entire St. Bernard Parish was under five metres
of water. Even Lehrman's Bar, sitting on the highest point, had a foot of
water on its floors. New Orleans was 80% underwater, but every other parish
had dry land from which to corral their vital resources.

"We were the only ones that were completely surrounded by water," Mr.
Rodriguez said. "We were the only ones that were completely devastated."

Just a 15-minute drive from downtown New Orleans, St. Bernard was also
completely forgotten, it seemed.

The silence lasted four days, until Thursday afternoon when the Canadians
arrived at the makeshift operations centre in an oil company building.

"I see these two guys dressed in [urban search and rescue] gear -- and they
were Canada Task Force One out of Vancouver," Mr. Stone said. "It was like,
'Oh my God. How did you guys get here?' "

Capt. Armstrong and his crew had been sent to Kenner, La., 23 kilometres
west of New Orleans, but were directed to St. Bernard when it became clear
how badly the area had been hit.

A sheriff found Capt. Armstrong and another member of his scout team and
took them to the operations centre.

"It was like seeing John Wayne and the cavalry pull up when you're down to
your last ammunition and the camp's getting ready to be overrun by the
enemy. Here was help. It was amazing," Mr. Stone said.

The rest of the team rolled in and started work on the Friday with local
firefighters who had commandeered all the boats they could find.

"Anything you could think of was floating around in that water. A lot of
times it was the smell of natural gas because a lot of the houses had come
right off their foundations, which had tore their gas lines," Capt.
Armstrong said.

Lorrie Allen, assistant to the parish president, said there seemed to be
snakes in the water everywhere. The rats were swimming to safety as well.

The team worked two days before any U.S. search and rescue teams arrived, a
point of bitterness in St. Bernard, where 129 people died. "There's anywhere
from 13 to 17 people still missing," Mr. Stone said.

The Canadians stayed five days. Before they left, they produced a Canadian
flag and asked if they could fly it.

"We had raised the aerial truck to try and put a repeater antenna up there
to try and boost our radio signal. It didn't work, but they presented our
guys with the Canadian flag and asked if we minded if they fly it," said the
fire chief.

"U.S. Coast Guard came in the next day and said, 'What is that flag flying
up there?'

"We proceeded to jump on them and let them know that it was flying up there
because this was some of our first outside help. I told them our first urban
search and rescue team was from Canada and that's how it was going to fly."

"If we look at it, we got more help out of our neighbours than we did out of
our own government. The Canadians came in, we had a German group that came
in ... They fixed every pumping station that we had," Mr. Rodriguez said.

"They didn't have to come here. They could have stayed home. But those are
neighbours. Those are people that you remember."

C National Post 2006