Boston Globe Finds Heroes: The Coast Guard

Chronology of errors: how a disaster spread

Amid all the chaos and confusion among would-be rescuers, however, at least one federal agency had planned ahead.

On the Sunday before Katrina hit, Jayhawk rescue helicopters from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod took off, hugging the coast, on a hopscotch to the hurricane zone. Coast Guard commanders were not waiting to implement their disaster response plan. Jayhawks from locations along the Eastern Seaboard arrived in the gulf just behind the storm, well before the bulk of the National Guard, the Pentagon's Northern Command, or the Department of Homeland Security, the new agency created after Sept. 11 to oversee FEMA, the Coast Guard, and dozens of other agencies.

Indeed, while state, local, and other federal officials appeared not to fully comprehend the magnitude of the disaster at hand, the Coast Guard acted with the urgency the crisis demanded.

Admiral Robert Duncan, head of the Eighth District in New Orleans, dispersed cutters, helicopters, and other vessels ahead of the storm. He also requested additional forces from the commander of the Coast Guard's Eastern Area, in Norfolk, Va., which is responsible for everything east of the Mississippi, according to Coast Guard officials.

''We don't have to get approval to execute," said Richard J. Dein, a retired Coast Guard commander and a search-and-rescue specialist. ''The Coast Guard is organized by geography. All of those districts act autonomously. They each have a command and control center. What you had was a ready response network."

Lives were saved -- some 1,200, the Coast Guard estimated -- before FEMA's Brown arrived in Baton Rouge after the storm....

Maybe the Coast Guard is skeptical of the Bush Administration and their "plans" because of this one?

Coast Guard Fights to Retain War Role
'Slack-Jawed' Over Criticism From Rumsfeld, Service Cites Its Battle Capabilities

By John Mintz and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 31, 2003; Page A07

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has all but decided to remove the U.S. Coast Guard from participation in future wars, a prospect that is devastating morale in the maritime service because of its pride at having taken part in most of the nation's armed conflicts over the past 200 years, defense sources said.