Originally published in The Augusta Chronicle, Sept. 5, 2006. Original URL: https://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/2006/09/05/met_95334.shtml
By Jeremy Craig
Imagine driving around a military base in south Mississippi, where you’ve never been before.
The power is out, and street lighting is nonexistent. Trees are all over the road.
Within 72 to 96 hours, you’re working with all your might – on little sleep – to get communications services working that emergency workers must have when cell phone towers have been blown over.
This is what Fort Gordon’s 67th Signal Battalion faced last year as soldiers from the unit were called to provide basic links to the outside world for soldiers and civilians trying to coordinate relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The soldiers were dispatched a year ago to Camp Shelby, Miss., a place normally used for National Guard training that became a nerve center for civilian and military relief efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi.
For the nerve center to work, the “nervous system” of lines to the outside world to operate – a system that the soldiers helped to provide after land-line and cellular telephones were knocked out of service and Internet service was affected.
The Internet was not a luxury for relief workers. Many of their systems to coordinate activities require access, said Lt. Col. Mike Plummer, the battalion’s commander.
“A lot of agencies have Web-based tools to do work. That is the norm,” he said.
Cell phones became almost as equally important, he said.
The soldiers also set up video teleconference sessions, allowing the colorful Lt. Gen. Russel Honor, the Cajun in charge of the military response after the storm, to speak with federal officials, including the president.
“They were candid, just the way we talk,” Lt. Col. Plummer said.
“It’s something when you see the president of the United States talking to staff, telling them in no uncertain terms to get it done.”
The 67th Signal Battalion wasn’t the only group based at Fort Gordon to send personnel to help with Katrina relief: About 100 members of the 56th Signal Battalion were sent to Louisiana.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center sent more than 20 doctors, nurses and other medical workers to New Orleans.
The 67th, which has deployed before to Iraq during the war, is gearing up to ship out again in October.
The battalion’s experiences in Iraq and in helping out with Hurricane Katrina relief aren’t necessarily comparable, but the job that was done during Katrina was extremely gratifying.
We were helping Americans directly,” Lt. Col. Plummer said. “We don’t get that opportunity that much.”