Sgt. Serafin Avitia saw it when he stepped off the plane and into the sticky, rainy weather of Louisiana.
Having been on a Maryland National Guard unit deployed to Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Avitia didn’t see the same urgency with Gustav.
“Where is the disaster?” he asked.
“Certainly there has been some problems here. But then, we were in tent cities when Katrina hit. I think people now were more prepared, and the storm wasn’t as bad as many had feared.”
Gustav caused some damage in central Louisiana, but the outpouring of military support from across the nation, as well as a weaker-than-expected storm, has the Maryland Guard changing its mission.
Seven of the 50 Maryland guardsmen deployed Tuesday will remain to help out with flight operations at the Louisiana Joint Operations Center in Baton Rouge. They are expected to fill voids in the Louisiana National Guard’s operation for the next seven to 10 days.
“The changing conditions didn’t have the number of aircraft needed for our brigade to command, so we’re keeping only a slice of our unit here,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Beyard, of Westminster.
The rest of the guardsmen were expected to return to Warfield Air Base in Middle River today after spending more than 24 hours awaiting their orders.
They call it “hurry up and wait” — the unofficial Army philosophy of rapidly preparing and deploying units, but having those units wait for hours or sometimes days — for the chain of command to give orders.
For some such as Master Sgt. Tim Dufour, it was frustrating to have to prepare so much and do so little.
“I’ve seldom seen a seamless operation continuously flowing from start to finish,” said Dufour, who has been in the military for 27 years. “It’s the culture, and you learn to be ready.”
The soldiers arrived Tuesday afternoon at Esler Field and spent the rest of the day waiting in a hangar. To pass the time, they played cards, watched movies and talked about past experiences in Iraq.
Many of these guardsmen have seen past tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and said the same kind of long waits happened there, as well.
But Maryland guardsmen said they did not see the mission as a waste.
“They call it ‘ground truth’ — when the boots are on the ground and you’re seeing what is actually going on, and what is actually needed,” said Capt. Darin Lesefka, of Bel Air, one of the seven who left Wednesday to Baton Rouge.
“What if they had needed us? We were here, and we were prepared,” Lesefka said.
The unit brought its own Humvees, air control gear and, most importantly, an entire box of toilet tissue.
The mission changed even before the first plane landed here. A handful of air traffic controllers were pulled from the last flight before the plane took off.
Bad weather also hindered the movement of the troops, as planes were needed to efficiently move the Maryland unit to Baton Rouge.
The soldiers landed under overcast skies, and throughout Tuesday and into midday Wednesday, frequent thunderstorms created blinding downpours and threats of tornadoes.
Gustav made its mark in Alexandria. Several large trees fell, along with several power lines. Every gully, stream and drainage ditch was overflowing with brown water.
The air base was running on generator power. All the houses along the main road out of the air base were dark.
At Camp Beauregard, where the soldiers slept Tuesday night, they had no power, and used generators to provide security lighting at the gates and power the chow hall and medical center.
The soldiers slept in a dark and damp barrack that was sticky from high humidity. One side of the barrack had standing water. Soldiers took cold showers in the dark.
But for the few soldiers who had been here during Katrina, the conditions were far better, as this time they had running water and were not living in tent cities.
“If they had needed us, we’d gladly would have spent two weeks here to help these people out,” Avitia said.
