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The following person chose to remain anonymous due to extrenuating circumstances. It is necessary for his identity to remain secret to prevent personal harm to him. He is the son of a military pilot and lived on a base for many years. He is also a pilot, and is knowledgeable about military aircraft.
Dandia: What preparations did you make before the hurricane? Anonymous: Nothing. Dandia: Absolutely none, at all? Anonymous: It depends on what you mean by preparations. Dandia: Well, I mean did you board up the windows...? Anonymous: Yeah. I boarded up a bunch of people's windows. Dandia: How early did you make them? Anonymous: About, three hours before the hurricane hit. You know, when it started sinking in to most people that it was actually going to hit. Dandia: Where were you during the hurricane? Anonymous: Shelter. Dandia: Which one? Anonymous: North Miami Beach. Dandia: But you weren't in an evacuation zone, oh you were? Who were you with? Anonymous: I don't remember names. People. Just a bunch of people. Dandia: No one you knew from before? Anonymous: No. Dandia: What thoughts were passing through your mind? Anonymous: Well, all I could think about was a friend of mine. I met up with her family that morning, and we decided that I would go over there and help them board up their house. But, when I showed up, they were gone. And, they had never been through a hurricane before. And I just could not, for the life of me, figure out where they were. The reason I ended up in a shelter was because I went looking for them. Dandia: You went looking for them when the hurricane had started already? Anonymous: Yeah, until about an hour in. Dandia: What was the first thing you did after the hurricane? Anonymous: Went and checked their house. Dandia: You went and checked their house to see if they were back or if it was okay or...? Anonymous: To see if it was okay, to see if they were back. I took down all the boards. Dandia: Oh you went and boarded it up? Anonymous: Yeah. Dandia: Okay. What was your reaction when you first saw the devastation? Anonymous: Well. I acted very nonchalant, but the deeper I went in, the worse it got. I was like... wind, wind did this. You know? It was amazing, it was just like geez. I remember, I was going up Krome Avenue, and I looked. And Krome Avenue, is miles from any body of water. And, there was this boat, that was tied to a dock, INSIDE these people's house. I mean there was a dock, hanging on to the boat, you know, and the boat's like in their living room. You know. And that was kind of like, Holy Crap, for lack of a better word. Dandia: You can curse if you feel the need. Did you receive help after the hurricane? Anonymous: Not really, 'cause I was busy helping everyone else. Dandia: I was just going to say. Did you provide help after the hurricane? Anonymous: Yeah. Dandia: Explain, please. Anonymous: Well, I went around and made sure all my friends were all right. I kept worrying about that one friend 'til finally someone let me know that they were back and that they were all right. What happened was that they went out of town. They just kind of said, oh screw this, we're going to Orlando. And you know, it was the smartest thing to do. I was very, very happy that they were back. I hadn't slept actually, and it had been I guess about 48 hours. I found that out, and it was just kind of like “Okay, thanks.” Boom! I was out like a light. Dandia: Okay, when you woke up, what did you do to help others? Anonymous: I started making calls. I found out who needed what, after I made sure all my immediate friends were taken care of, that they didn't need anything, and then I just, I went down there. I got in touch with my buddies at Opa Locka, I was trying to find some of my friends at Homestead, some of which I still haven't found. They've been transferred to like McDill Air Force Base. Some of them went back to Lackland, which is funny. Lackland Air Force Base is in Texas, it's a boot camp. It's a very large base, and Kelly Air Force Base is right next to it, so. I guess it's kind of logical, 'cause it's such a large area. I started making calls. I volunteered with the Red Cross. Made sure I got my I.D. right away 'cause I didn't want to be held up. I wanted to be able to help as many people as possible. At one point I had to come by to say good-bye to a friend of mine because he was going back to school. He was a little upset that he had to leave that day. He wanted to come and help too. As a matter of fact, he's coming down next week for Thanksgiving. This will be his first view of what happened. Then I found myself in a position to do something that ordinarily I wouldn't have been able to do. Dandia: What's that? Anonymous: Search and Rescue. With army forces that came down. I guess you could say I pulled a few strings to get myself into this position 'cause these people are new. It was cool. I was flying around in Hueys. It was going here, pick this stuff up, fly back to the Air Force Base. Basically what we were doing was salvaging stuff. Very depressing, God. All those aircrafts that got destroyed. I saw that one F-16 that got flipped over, and the wing was ripped off. God, I wanted to cry. And you know it was shock, that's not fair. They evacuate as many of the planes as they can, but planes that were getting serviced. God. I don't know if you know what a C-130 is. It's a really huge plane. One of the biggest planes out there. It was just... like it was a toy given to a really bratty two-year-old. He just took it and threw it around, it was totally destroyed. I was amazed more than anything at that one. It was just kind of like, 'Oh my God!' Those planes CRASH and don't get that destroyed. And then there were all the little planes that were there, and were at Tamiami. That was the first thing that really got to me. Should I explain that I am a pilot? Dandia: I think you just did that. Go on. Anonymous: Well, like I said, I am a pilot. It's been my dream, like all of my life to fly planes like that. And to see them just kind of thrown around, it was just 'Oh my Goodness.' A few of the other aviators that were with the unit were kind of the reacting the same way. Some of them were salvageable but there was one F-16 that was just gone. There was like nothing we could do, just dump it somewhere. We just salvaged as much as we could. What most people don't know, was they were saying President Bush took so long, the main place that needed help was Homestead. The fastest way to get help to Homestead was to land at Homestead. So, the main priority was getting the base cleared so we could reopen the airfield. Everybody was bitching, oh he took so long. He started sending people the other ways. The masses of troops didn't show up until we had that airfield open. That was kind of like a victory, I guess you could say,when the first plane landed everybody was jumping around and celebrating. After that it was like 'This is so cool.' It reminded me of home. I used to live on an Air Force Base, and do all kinds of stuff like that. I was just happy for a while. Then we started getting into the other work. Which is what Search and Rescue is actually about, I found out. It's usually in cases like that, there's not much left to rescue. The most accurate analogy I heard was that the only thing that could do that to someplace was strategic carpet bombing or concentration bombing. There's nothing strategic about it because you just kind of bomb. You blow up everything in sight. The only thing missing were the craters the bombs leave behind. An interesting comparison was one of the first estimates of the damage, money wise, was $33 billion, which was the exact same amount of damage we did to Baghdad when we bombed them. I think everybody saw that assault on TV since the war was televised. It was ratings week. It makes you think. All that destruction, and this time man had nothing to do with it. Actually I think some people were jealous. Dandia: So, Search and Rescue. Anonymous: Well, we started out in Homestead. We just kind of drove around, checking houses, made sure that the people that were around there had gotten out okay, and we were asking people, 'Listen, do you know anyone that needs medical attention?' since that was the first priority. And most of the people, as much damage as there was in Homestead, most of the people got out. Even the people that stayed in their homes. With their roof flying off, they hid in their closets or their bathrooms. But most people got out fine. Then we started going in a little deeper. Florida City and Leisure City, and that's when you start getting into the labor camps. It got progressively worse and worse. These people were not citizens. I would dare to say 90-95% of them were illegal. They were afraid that if they went to the shelters, that they'd get deported. I guess theyfigured they'd rather die than get sent out of the country. It reminds me of a joke ironically. I don't remember it clearly, but it was about how so many people that live in this country hate it, we need a new batch of immigrants to love it. There they were. It kind of put me to shame. I know people that think that they are so patriotic, and that they supported the country so much, they were wearing yellow ribbons during the war. These people loved this country so much that they'd die because there might have been a CHANCE of them getting deported. I know they weren't citizens but those people were Americans. The official body count, according to the media, ended up like 40-something or 50-something. I don't remember, I didn't pay any attention to it. And they had the rumor control lines, which basically spread rumors. Instead of confirming a lot of the information that people had, they said 'No,no, that is not true.' Which is understandable at times. Can you imagine they say 'Oh we have about 200 hundred bodies down at the hospital, if you can't find your loved ones, come on down!' It just wouldn't have been very cool. A lot of people need to know that official means people they identified. Anyone they couldn't identify because they had been torn up beyond belief, or they found bodies without identification or anything. Those people, they're not people? They don't count. And of course non-citizens don't count. God forbid. That is a little disgusting. For as far as I can remember, all I've ever, EVER planned on doing was joining the military. I'm the original Mr. Gung-Ho. It kind of made me ashamed to live in this country. Seeing some of the things MY government does. And I've always known that there were things that they did. You know, behind people's back, and I even know about some of the things they did, that most people don't know. They're not supposed to know anyway. I guess it never hit so close to home. As a matter of fact, I want to read something to you. This is a letterI wrote when I was in Leisure City. We had set up a camp for the night. We just figured it was too late to go back. It would be redundant. It was like three o'clock in the morning and we had to be back there at five. What happened was that the unit that was supposed to come relieve us never showed. So they just kind of told us to stay there. That we'd come back later. But, when they said it was time to come back, the C.O. just kind of said 'what the hell for?' Dandia: What's the C.O.? Anonymous: Commanding Officer. I sat down with pen and paper and I wrote this to a friend of mine that's in the Air Force. I think this has something to do with a question that you're going to ask later. Dear Cadet Grimm, Greetings and salutations. As you read this later, you're probably going to think about how fucked I am again. But, this is something different. Right about now, you're reading from someone you don't know. You may not be able to understand what I am about to say, but I'll give it a shot. You were able to go right after the storm, so you didn't have to deal with the aftermath. I told you that I was going to go volunteer with the Red Cross. Well, I got the chance to work with some army units, so I did that instead. At first it was great. I got to be around all the military aircraft and they were flying us from place to place in Hueys and I thought it was real fun. But then we got down to the real work: Search and Rescue. The only thing was, there wasn't much left to rescue. As I got to know some of the guys in the unit, I found out that this job was more affectionately called "Body Count Duty." In the past month or so, I have personally recovered about 163 bodies. Women, children, teachers, nurses, librarians. People that seemingly didn't deserve to die. It made me see many things in a new perspective. I am sure this is going to shock you, I don't think I'm joining the Air Force anymore. Out of all the anecdotes that I have heard about the total devastation, the most recurring, and accurate I might add, is that it looked like an area that had been targeted for saturation bombing. The only things that were missing were the potholes or craters. And who delivers these massive calls to death? Military aircraft pilots. What I have always wanted to do with my life. I've worked so hard to get away from all that death and deception and flat out lies that the military brought into my life. I cannot dispense for them what they dispensed to me. Much less on such a large scale. I personally know people who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. And I can't be one of those pawns. When it comes down to it, war hurts nobody but the people, and notice I say people and not countries, hurt the people who fight in them. And in most cases innocent people who have nothing to do with the conflict itself die and are written off as acceptable losses. If I learned anything from this, it's that there is no such thing as "acceptable loss" when human life is involved. Needless to say, my perspective on life has changed, just a little bit. It's funny, Grimm never got that letter. I ended up talking to him on the phone first. I told him about everything. I don't know why I keep it. I guess as something to help me remember why I think the way I do. A few days after I wrote that letter, we met up with another unit. There was this one Jewish guy there. This old Jew. At one point, during that day, he had a nervous breakdown. He had found a small child, and he was bringing it back so we could put it in a bag and put it on the truck. And he just fell to his knees and started crying. He wouldn't let the child go. Finally, after a while, they got him to calm down. That night, we went back to the base. Nobody asked him about it. Nobody wanted to bring it up. Out of nowhere, he just started talking. He explained that the reason he got so upset and started crying, was that it reminded him of the Holocaust. We've all seen those movies, of what Hitler did to the Jews. Everybody was like 'Oh my gosh!' How could one person be so cruel? And do this to these people. It was such a tragedy. But when something like that happens here, they play it down. Dandia: Has that changed your mentality about God? Anonymous: Yeah. Dandia: Is that good or bad? Anonymous: That's good. Just done a lot of changing in my mentality about God in the past year. Dandia: Does it make you question God and His motives? Anonymous: No. I mean just thinking in a religious sense, we had it coming. Going by the life you're supposed to live, in the various philosophies, not to point out one or the other, we're just not doing it. I think that it's a very fit punishment. All throughout the ages, if you look at any religious material, and there is some form of punishment because people weren't living according to the law of God. Look at Sodom and Gomorrah. And the destruction of Sodom. This might not be a fitting example, but the fall of Rome.A lot of people are like that was a political thing. If you're thinking on a higher scale, an empire that took hundreds of years to build, FELL. There's countless... there are examples of this in Buddhism, Hinduism, E-------ianism, any religion you can find there's at least one example of God punishing people for not following the law. As far as that goes, I think it fits right in. Dandia: What effects has the hurricane had on your daily life? Anonymous: It makes me remember. There's just no way to avoid not seeing. I guess I should rephrase that. There's no way to avoid seeing something that was affected by the hurricane. I used to work out at the University of Miami, surprise, out at the Marine School on Key Biscayne. That is a very familiar area to me. I spent a lot of my time there. I went and it was like 'Where the hell am I?' I don't know if you remember, during the hurricane, radar went out. Well, what it is is this big huge ball. It's a radar. This thing is BIG. It just kind of blew off. That's why we lost our radar. The wind trashed it. Going back to the question you said about God, I think that would be very fitting. It's like 'No, I'm not going to let you see what's coming.' SWAT. Good-bye radar. Things like that. I went to my aunt's house with a few community youth. I couldn't find it. I could not find my aunt's house. It was so strange. Even without looking at the street signs I knew landmarks, but they were gone. They weren't gone, just in different places. The big tree on the corner just isn't there anymore. Tends to throw you off a bit. Dandia: Okay. We've already done the "change your plans for the future." Have you decided something alternate to what you wanted to do as far as flying or is it kind of open now? Anonymous: I know I'm going to fly. What I always wanted to do was when I retired from the service, I wanted to open my own charter service. I guess the road is going to be a little bit harder, but I'm still going to do it. It's a shame that they have to put such beautiful machines to use that way, doesn't mean I'm going to hate the original concept. I don't think anything will ever change my love for flying. Dandia: What was the mentality of everyone working with you at the Air Force Base? Anonymous: Well, that depends. Do you want the bullshit mentality that they put up when everybody else was around or when we were at the barracks at night? Dandia: Both of them. What was the attitude they showed everyone? Anonymous: They were just like okay, we're here to clean up. A lot of joking around, a lot of ... Dandia: Was that their sense of coping, do you think? Anonymous: I guess. Military training, is not only a physical conditioning but it's a mental conditioning. There are certain guidelines you MUST GO BY. If a person is trained well, they will. No matter what, you don't let anyone see, God forbid something affects you. But, when you get alone,with each other, things tend to change. 'Cause these are the people that you more than likely trust your life with. Dandia: Plus the fact that everybody knows that everybody else is putting up a front. Anonymous: Right. Exactly. Dandia: Was there a lot of discussing of what happened that day? Anonymous: Yeah. A lot of crying. Dandia: Really? Anonymous: Really. These big macho men that you would never expect it from. It's just like, shit. You've got a room full of fifteen men, one of them breaks down crying, the other fourteen are like "Shit! What do we do now?" Considering, I think they all dealt with it rather well. Dandia: What did they do comfort each other? Anonymous: Basically, when one of them lost it, everybody else put up the front. Dandia: It wasn't like a group cry? Anonymous: No. There was the occaisonal hug, a "cheer up." It's not like everybody would break down and start crying. No. Dandia: These were all males, right? Anonymous: Yes. As far as the ego is concerned, it's not a very manly thing to do. Dandia: According to society. Anonymous: Right. Dandia: What did you do to comfort yourself? Anonymous: Wondered. Wondered why? I just started, I made a reference to my ideals of God changing over the past year, it just makes me think. God, do I have to experience this to understand what it was I was getting in to? To know what I was going to do? Dandia: And that helped? Anonymous: It hurt and it helped. It helped in the sense that I've become, I was going to say much more religiously aware, but that's not very accurate. I've been studying religion for quite some time. I guess you could say I've been trying to become more conforming, and living basically the way I'm supposed to, according to the particular philosophy that I follow. As far as that area is concerned, it helped tremendously. But then there's also a HUGE transition. I'm talking for as far back as I can remember. I learned how to read with my father's flight manual. It's something I've prepared myself my WHOLE LIFE for, to turn around and say "Ah, no. Forget it. I'm not going to do it." It's not that easy. Dandia: I think we've discussed your mentality, do you want to add anything about the way your thinking has changed? Anonymous: Sounds pretty sad, but I thought I was, I thought I had a very high moral status before. I think I value life much more now. To the point where, it almost disgusts me that I didn't think this way before. Dandia: Is there anything else you would like to add that I have not asked? Anonymous: I need a few minutes to think about that.
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