3 days ago
Remembering Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of Hurricane Hunter
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Lt. Col. Sean Cross, Chief of Safety for the 403rd Wing of the Hurricane Hunters is one of the few pilots who has been inside Hurricane Katrina.
Keesler Airforce Base in Biloxi, Mississippi is the headquarters for the Hurricane Hunters but Cross was born and raised in South Louisiana.
He remembers Hurricane Katrina intimately, saying 'Katrina is like this huge measurement in time. When you take off out of here and fly a storm that is going to make landfall where you live, it does something to you. You don't know if you are going to come home to anything being left. I was like, y'all don't understand what is coming this way in the next 36 hours. This is going to be devastating and it's going to change the coast forever… and it did!'
Impact of coastal erosion through Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project
Hurricane Katrina was devasting, and it's effects continue to today.
It changed the way we all respond to disasters across the country and how we premeditate natural disasters.
'I flew Katrina and we landed early that morning and went to the house. We had been up all night long and woke up around three that afternoon. I saw a boat in a second-floor bedroom sitting there. I saw a car buried in the front yard because the ground was so soft. The entire hood was down in the mud. We saw a piano in a tree that had been moved around because of the storm surge. There were sheets and blankets everywhere. The worst was when we saw an ambulance loading up the deceased,' Cross said
The Hurricane Hunters fly hundreds of mission each storm season. They gather information to track the center of the storm, where each slight shift in the eye of the storm, changes the cone of uncertainty for miles.
With each slight shift, the lives of millions on the ground are effected.
One of the things that Cross says keeps him safe, is a Ziploc bag full of religious mementos from his grandmother. He has had that bag since his early days of military training.
'I'm closing in on the end of my career. I'm finishing up my 36th year right now. What has kept me involved in this all the time, is the strong desire to help people, fly the mission and be part of the Air Force. The only way to pinpoint the lowest center of pressure inside a hurricane is to put a manned aircraft in it. Right in the belly of the beast,' explained Halloween's annual kick-off event killed by 'supply chain issues'
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