Throughout their Kuwait deployments, 2,000 members of the Coast Guard’s PSUs ensured the free flow of personnel, equipment, and commerce in the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet’s AOR. PSUs worked with their Navy counterparts to protect high-value assets carrying millions of tons of ammunition, fuel, and equipment to northern Arabian ports through the Persian Gulf; provided security to offshore oil and gas platforms; and logged more than 4,600 underway boat hours annually. The last unit to serve at Kuwait Naval Base, the Ohio-based PSU 309, returned home on Oct. 3, 2012.
Maritime Response: Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy
As a multimission organization, the Coast Guard is capable of handling multiple contingencies in the maritime environment; it rarely uses its people and assets in the fulfillment of one mission at a time. In fact, circumstances – including emergencies that strain resources at all levels of government – rarely allow it to.
During Hurricane Isaac, a Category 1 storm that struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 28, 2012, aircrews from Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile, Ala., and Air Station New Orleans, La., rescued people from a flooded house in LaPlace, La., and an unmoored house barge. After the storm, Coast Guard helicopters from New Orleans; Houston, Texas; and Mobile continued to fly over the area, searching for signs of distress and giving assistance as needed.
Members of a Coast Guard Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) return from a medevac for a trucker from Texas along the flooded frontage road by the Highway 55 underpass in LaPlace, La., Aug. 31, 2012. The DART assisted flooded residents in Louisiana due to Tropical Storm Isaac. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Bill Colclough
A Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) – a specialized Coast Guard team composed mainly of reservists, organized specifically to work with local emergency operations centers to rescue and evacuate victims, deliver personnel and supplies, and provide support – was rushed by C-130 to the scene on Aug. 29 to assist with response and recovery efforts. The DART, from Marine Safety Detachment Cincinnati, Ohio, deployed its specialized flat-bottomed boats into the floodwaters of the coast, enabling its members to travel house to house and reach areas inaccessible to other assets. In all, the DART crew rescued five people and assisted partner agencies in the delivery of food and supplies to residents in one of Louisiana’s hardest-hit areas.
The Coast Guard was also instrumental in the response efforts to Hurricane Sandy, the storm that struck the Northeastern United States in late October. Before it had even made landfall, Sandy precipitated perhaps the Coast Guard’s most dramatic rescue of the year: the helicopter hoists of 14 survivors from life rafts approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C., after their ship – the three-mast tall ship Bounty, a replica built for the 1962 Marlon Brando film – began sinking in stormy 18-foot swells.
U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Blaine Nibley, with the National Strike Force’s Pacific Strike Team, assesses an area damaged by Hurricane Sandy for pollution hazards in South Amboy, N.J., Nov. 24, 2012. Nibley, a response member with the Hurricane Sandy Pollution Response Unified Command, was assessing environmental impacts as a result of the hurricane. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer Andrew Ksenzulak
Sandy affected people in 24 states, including the entire Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine, and was the second-costliest hurricane in U.S. history. The federal response was enormous, and the Coast Guard played a leading role. Coast Guard aircrews from Air Stations Atlantic City and Cape Cod provided search and rescue (SAR) response; shallow-water airboat teams from the 9th District (Cleveland, Ohio) were dispatched to respond to flooded communities, and senior Coast Guard leaders helped to assess the damage to ports and waterways and coordinate the reopening of waterways and facilities.
In the wake of the storm, while cleanup, border, and port recovery efforts continued, members from Coast Guard MSST Kings Bay, Ga., deployed to support safety and security efforts imposed by mandatory evacuation orders in New Jersey. The 33-member deployable team, consisting of boatcrews, engineers, and support members, working closely with personnel from Sector Delaware Bay, conducted patrols along a 40-mile stretch from the southern tip of Long Beach Island to the Point Pleasant Canal. Recovery efforts continued well into 2013, with Sector Delaware Bay personnel helping to replace the navigational aids – most of which had simply been destroyed – in New Jersey’s harbors and coastal waterways.
Marine Transportation System Management
The Coast Guard is charged with ensuring the navigability of not only the nation’s 90,000 miles of coastline, but also 25,000 miles of inland waterways and more than 3,700 marine terminals. This requires it to maintain more than 50,000 short-range aids to navigation (ATONs), such as signs, lights, beacons, and channel markers. Its Vessel Traffic Services also ensure the safety and efficiency of river transport – and reduce the likelihood of environmental damage – by controlling the flow of vessel traffic.