How Nebraska Guard Soldiers Are Helping with Harvey

Sept. 1, 2017, 3:44 a.m. ·

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Nebraska Army National Guard pilots Tom Morris and Mitchell Tessendorf prepare for a mission in Texas (photo by Sgt. Anna Pongo, Nebraska National Guard)

Nebraska National Guard helicopter units have been in Texas all week, helping with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Mike Tobias talked with one of the soldiers about what they’re doing and what they’re seeing.


The Nebraska soldiers started flying missions on Monday while the storm was still happening. The 37 soldiers and seven helicopters come from two Nebraska Army National Guard units: Company G, 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion based in Lincoln and Company B, 2-135th General Support Aviation Battalion based in Grand Island. At first they were hauling supplies into the Houston area. Then the mission turned into search and rescue. Now it’s more transportation, like moving nine nurses from one hospital to another. “We’re very flexible that way,” says First Sgt. Ron Schroeder of Crete. He is with the 2-104th; we talked with him by phone on Friday.

A view of the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey from one of the Nebraska National Guard helicopters. (Nebraska National Guard photo)


Sgt. Ryan Polich and Sgt. Dylan Hergenrader prepare their UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter for flight. (photo by Sgt. Anna Pongo, Nebraska National Guard)


Soldiers load some of the 1,500 pounds of food they'll transport on a flight to Galveston. (Nebraska National Guard photo)


Omaha World-Herald journalists Erin Duffy and Chris Machian have been in Texas following the work of the Nebraska National Guard and Nebraska Task Force One, which is comprised of first responders from the Omaha Fire Department, Lincoln Fire and Rescue and Papillion Fire Department. Follow their coverage at www.omaha.com.

MIKE TOBIAS, NET NEWS: Talk about one of the search and rescue missions.

FIRST SGT. RON SCHROEDER, NEBRASKA ARMY NATIONAL GUARD: Wednesday was the busiest. In my aircraft we picked up 87 people. 24 of those were children. And we picked up 17 dogs and two cats. It was pretty crazy. This was in Port Arthur (Texas), and there were probably 30 aircraft working that area. Every service, U.S. Customs, U.S. Border Patrol, sheriff’s departments. It was just amazing how many aircraft were around, doing everything from rescue hoists to landing in really tight landing zones and getting people out.

TOBIAS: Talk about the difficulty of these rescue missions.

SCHROEDER: It's challenging, but our guys are up to the challenge that's for sure. Most of my guys have deployed several times. In fact half of the guys we have here were in Afghanistan, just came home in April and we’ve got them down here working. The stuff we’ve done in training is really paying off here. The crew coordination it takes to search, to spot landing zones that we can land into, and then to get a big helicopter into a really tight landing zone, it takes a lot of practice. And luckily we’ve done all that before this.

TOBIAS: With the rescue missions, how often are you able to land and how often are you do this from the air?

SCHROEDER: It varies a lot. We prefer to land if we can. Hoisting is a lot riskier for everybody involved, so we prefer to land if we can. If we can land then we can pick up, on one of our missions we picked up nine adults and nine children and we had we had 18 on board and got them out of there. If we had tried to hoist that it would have taken probably an hour and instead it took just long enough to load them up and get out of there. Then we drop them off at a collection point and somebody there would take care of them. I honestly have no idea where they end up after that One of our aircraft did several hoist missions where they just get down, and it might be in the water. It might just be in an area we just can’t land in because of wires and trees. So they we use the hoist to get the medic down there and he would ride up and down multiple times. We don’t want civilians on that hoist by themselves. So he goes up with them and holds on to them. I think on one hoist he had a mom and a baby, so he just hung on to both and brought them up.

TOBIAS: Given the weather, given the number of other aircraft that you’re around, there’s danger with this type of mission.

SCHROEDER: Yes, it’s challenging, it's risky, but everybody doing a really good job of, you know, your head’s on a swivel. You keep an eye out for everything going on. I was surprised we only saw one drone. It wasn’t really a factor, there’s a lot of those out there these days. And then with the aircraft around, you don’t go fast. You go slow and make sure you’ve got an eye on every aircraft because one could pop out of an LZ (landing zone) right in front of you, and you’ve got to make sure you see that.

TOBIAS: What have you seen that sticks with you?

SCHROEDER: The biggest thing is how people just do everything they can to help each other. I've seen nothing negative at all. The response has been incredible. There's so many boats out there. John boats, air boats out there just helping each other out. If they can get on a boat and get to higher ground it's a lot safer than us, especially hoisting. There was one place that the highest ground was a bridge but it was surrounded by water on both sides. So we would fly in to there and pick them up from the bridge and haul them about two miles, drop them off in a church parking lot and there were Boy Scouts there to take them from there, take them off and take their luggage. I met a guy who was picking up people in a dump truck, because it was kind of high water, he could drive in the high water. And then he had a ladder to get him back out. We stopped, and I was figuring out who we could take from him, and he had the best quote I've heard yet: “we all just got to keep helping out until we’re okay.” And that’s what everybody is doing.

TOBIAS: You were involved in a similar deployment for Hurricane Katrina (in 2005). Does is seem similar?

SCHROEDER: Some of it does. When you pick up an aircraft full of people and when you take off there's so many different reactions. Some of the kids are scared, some are excited like it’s an amusement park ride. That’s the same with some of the adults. And then we get them up in the air and they get to see what's going on over the whole city, just like we do all the time but they see it for the first time. And a lot of them. They just get really quiet and they just watch because they can't believe what's going on. I remember that definitely from New Orleans. The big difference here is the response is about five days ahead of schedule from New Orleans, which is fantastic. That's been the big difference. Everybody is basically running here as the storm is still going on, instead of waiting for two or three days after.

TOBIAS: How much longer will you be there?

SCHROEDER: (laughing) I don’t know. Whatever they want from us. Everybody keeps asking that, and I really have no idea. If it’s tomorrow, if it’s 10 days, if it’s 100 days, we’ll do whatever we have to do.

TOBIAS: Are you tired?

SCHROEDER: They’ve got us in hotel rooms (currently in Sugar Land, Texas), that helps a ton. We have a spare crew. So once every three or four days you get a day off. Now that day off means that you’re the guy running around, like I am today, taking care of soldiers. And that’s your day to do laundry and get caught up on that.

TOBIAS: Anything else you want people to know?

SCHROEDER: I just want everybody in Nebraska to know that these are your soldiers and they’re doing a fantastic job down here.