Editor’s note: Target 8 investigator Ken Kolker was a reporter at The Grand Rapids Press when Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Within days, he was covering West Michigan’s response.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — I reached hard-hit southern Mississippi in the belly of a helicopter: a red Bell LongRanger flown by former U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot Kevin Nelson of Traverse City.
It was an 800-mile trip from the Ottawa Executive Airport near Jenison to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, flying not far above the treetops, with six stops for fuel along the way, just days after the hurricane hit.
As a reporter for The Grand Rapids Press at the time, I was equipped with my still camera, some notebooks and a surprisingly settled stomach. Perhaps it was the Dramamine.
PDF: Read Ken Kolker’s reporting on Hurricane Katrina for The Grand Rapids Press
The pilot was working with West Michigan-based International Aid, which, on the day the storm hit, had already sent $750,000 in supplies, like water, blankets and personal hygiene kits, along with volunteers.
This particular helicopter mission was to help hard-hit, small towns not yet reached by relief workers.
In Hattiesburg, they set up a makeshift distribution center in an Old Navy store that was under construction. We slept on the concrete floor and got food and water from a nearby Southern Baptist church.
In the small town of Poplarville, south of Hattiesburg, the chopper landed in a pastor’s backyard to deliver baby food, formula and boxes of Cheerios collected in Michigan’s Leelanau County.
Grateful survivors formed bucket brigades to empty the chopper, then stood hand-in-hand in prayer circles with those who had swooped in to help.
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The pilot and other International Aid volunteers delivered 240 loaves of donated Wonder bread to a Baptist church in the woods in Picayune, near the Mississippi-Louisiana line. The church’s steeple lay on the ground.
My mission on this trip: Try not to squish the bread stacked high all around me. Mission accomplished.
Again, a human chain of townsfolk formed to accept the bread.
The riskiest mission was the flight to deliver medicine to the New Orleans Superdome, which had become a makeshift Mash unit taken over by the military.
The chopper buzzed 900 feet above the ground, over toppled boats and washed-out neighborhoods, avoiding other rescue helicopters. The strong smell of sewage forced us to close the windows. We flew not far from a helicopter dumping water on a burning building. Floodwaters had displaced tombs and caskets at some cemeteries.
The chopper settled down on a landing pad at the Superdome, delivered the meds and, within minutes, was off on another mission.
