So Says National Guard General Steve Blum

LTG H Steven Blum is the Chief of the National Guard Bureau -- the top man in the organization that ties together the 50 State and four Territorial National Guards in the USA. And he wants everybody to know how proud he is of his part-time servicemembers -- especially the helicopter ground and flight crews. During Hurricane Katrina, the Guard copters (and those of other services) saved thousands of people from rising flood-waters.

As Aero-News reported at the time, helicopters were the only chance for many, cut off from escape to dry land by floodwaters, a hurricane-boosted tidal surge and collapsed levees. The National Guard has already called up 8,500 soldiers before the hurricane hit, but Blum saw, as civil government collapsed in Louisiana, that it wasn't going to be enough. Speaking to a group of journalists at the University of Maryland, Blum described what he did next.

"We thought we had what we needed; we were wrong. We needed four times that. So in the next six days I sent 42,000 additional citizen-soldiers from every single state in the nation and the territories of Guam, Virgin Island and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia."

"Fifty-four of the 54 National Guards sent troops to Mississippi and Louisiana post-Katrina," Blum said. "It was absolutely the largest and fastest military response to a domestic event in the history of this nation."

As the post-hurricane recriminations still echo, Blum (below) takes pride that the National Guard has been one of the rare organizations to be praised (another is the Coast Guard). FEMA may be a basket case, the city and state evacuation plans written by Lewis Carroll, and the New Orleans police may prefer to join looters rather than beat them, but the Guard came out of the debacle with its reputation intact, if not burnished.

The Army National Guard's helicopters, Blum said, saved 17,443 lives. (There's a body count to be proud of). With a maximum of 133 copters deployed, that means each green machine averaged well over 100 lives saved. But he's being a little hyperbolic with that "saved," right? I mean, they "hauled" 17,000 people, but "saved?"  Well, the man says he means "saved."

"I'm not talking about 'moved,' I'm talking about 'saved.' Taken from deep water where they were going to drown to dry spaces where they were going to live."

OK, then, he really means "saved."

The principal helicopter types deployed were Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters and Boeing CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopters.

The Air National Guard's fixed-wing elements contributed as well; it provided airlift to move 70,000 Americans who had lost their homes (and, usually, jobs) to places around the country where they could make a new start. "A lot of people missed" the airlift, Blum pointed out to the journalist audience.

On September 1, during Katrina, the Guard hit its most-deployed percentage since World War II (when it was absorbed into the active Army; the unit you see being shot to pieces in the first reel of "Saving Private Ryan" is the Guard's 116th Infantry, 29th Division). About 78,000 Guardsmen were overseas in Iraq and other places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sinai, and the Horn of Africa, and about 50,000 were deployed to Katrina. Counting the people not deployed, but supporting the effort from home, the general figured almost half of the Guard's 460,000 soldiers and airmen were involved somehow.

The Guard, Blum said, "has proven itself as a reliable force and Sept. 1 was probably proof positive. When you call out the Guard, you truly do call out America."

FMI: www.ngb.army.mil