Goldstien: When did you first realize that Hurricane Andrew might hit Miami?

DaSilva: Well, the unit that I’m in, in the National Guard, it’s a strange unit. It’s an Intelligence Unit, so we have a lot of different requirements and I spend most of the summers on active duty instead of doing just two weeks. You know, one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. A lot of us spend the bulk of the summer on active duty, and I happened to be in Arizona for the summer and I got back here, I think it was two days before the hurricane hit, and I just had enough time when I got back to take my property out of storage, put it back in here [fraternity house], and then I caught the news where everyone was saying, “Well, hey, you know, this thing might be coming this way,” and I put all my uniforms in the cleaners with the exception of one, luckily, and it was two days, so I started getting the preparations for the house. But my first concern was here. We had all the new freshmen in and a lot of them were from the north and didn’t know what was going on, so we had to organize, get this place set. And that was it, two days beforehand and I wasn’t even notified by my unit.

Goldstien: So you didn’t know, when you were in Arizona, about the storm?

DaSilva: No, I didn’t know at all. I didn’t know anything when I got back until I saw the news and they said something was up and may be on the way here. My unit hadn’t contacted me, and I was so busy running around and I was really burned out from being on active duty the whole summer so I said, “Well, if it is serious enough they will call me.” I knew they would anyway.

Goldstien: What preparations did you take? You had freshman with you. Were they put up somewhere or were they left in the house?

DaSilva: Well, I told whichever ones that could to get out of town and, as a matter of fact, some of them went up to our chapter in Orlando, which was nice enough to put them up there for awhile. Some of them decided to stay for whatever reasons. A few wanted to stay because they knew that there was a lot of work that had to be done on the house and they wanted to be sure the house was safe.

Goldstien: What did you think it would be like before the storm? Did you think it would be serious?

DaSilva: I thought, “OK, I’ve been through Hurricane David when I was an undergraduate and everybody partied, everybody just partied,” and the think the same kind of atmosphere, I saw the same type of thing where everybody thought, “Oh, it’s going to be a great time,” and I went, “Well, wait a minute!” and started looking at the news reports and seeing what kind of storm it was and how they were predicting it was going to upgrade and all this other stuff, and I started saying, “This isn’t going to be a party storm. This could be something more serious than anybody thinks.” And a few guys took it and noticed that and said, “OK, let’s see if we can prepare, but at the same time, if it turns into nothing, we’re ready to party.”

Goldstien: Do you think you were wellprepared for it though?

DaSilva:Yeah, I think we were. Myself, I think I was very prepared. Again, I had all of my military equipment to start with and my own meals ready-to-eat military food and stuff like that, batteries for my flashlights and everything, so I was prepared. What I tried to do was make sure that they understood the same thing. I had a couple of ROTC guys who tried to prepare the same way using some of their equipment, and they lent equipment to other guys, and getting water and food and things like that. I told them what we need to do and I think we were very prepared, about as prepared as we could have been.

Goldstien: Did some people end up partying?

DaSilva: Well, strangely enough, I think a couple of guys took it lightly because the house did very well. I mean physical structure, and it was strange actually. It was a very unique experience. By this breezeway right here, the wind was swirling from the north, and when the wind started kicking up we were in the breezeway, and I was just monitoring this and the news at the same time and said “OK, when it gets serious enough,” I can probably tell, “I’m going to get everybody inside.” But, the problem is when you close that big wooden door, and we have a central room in there where I put everybody is very safe but it’s also a little stifling in there, and I said, “OK, we are going to have to leave the door open as long as we can.” People were looking out the door and standing in the breezeway, and again I monitored that to make sure that when it got serious enough, everybody would come in. We did so well, I mean the house, and with the wind coming from the north, the house deflected it. We were standing in the breezeway until four. The wind would get bigger and bigger and bigger, but we were really in no danger, and it was a very unique thing to be right out there, whereas everybody I’m sure were in closets and things like that, and it was very unique.

Goldstien: What were your emotions or general thoughts of you or of the people you were with before the hurricane?

DaSilva: As we saw the news reports and that it was getting stronger, I think, for myself, I was hoping that no one was taking it too lightly, and I was a little worried that with the strength of the, this hurricane it was going to cause some serious damage and probably loss of lives in the immediate area, and I figured something’s going to happen and we really need to be prepared for that. We really need to know what we’re doing as far as being able to help out and things like that for electrical things and storm related damage for safety precautions. That was my main concern.

Goldstien: So you were in a secure room during the hurricane?

DaSilva:Yes, right about 4:15 is when we came in and actually closed the door and stayed inside.

Goldstien: What were you doing during the storm?

DaSilva: Just watching and monitoring.

Goldstien: And did you have a TV or anything with you?

DaSilva: Yeah, that went out and when that went out, somebody had a battery radio. We were basically, like I said, outside watching. It was more interesting to be out there.

Goldstien: When did you get called back to duty?

DaSilva: About 7:30 or 8:00 that morning.

Goldstien: How did they get a hold of you?

DaSilva: My phone was working. The power was out, but my phone was working. We were walking around looking at the house. As a matter of fact, I got a chance to walk down the street once the sun came up and saw how bad it was here. As a matter of fact, we could see the Hurricane Center from the front of the house, and we saw that the radar ball was gone and that kind of startled some people. Even the people who don’t understand the magnitude of a hurricane and have never been through it looked at this thing and said, “Oh wait a minute, this radar ball is gone now, this is kind of serious.” Aside from the fact that the whole row was basically trashed, and we could see it, and I happened to come in my room and get the phone call. I kind of knew, so I was ready to call them, but what I was doing was getting all my gear together.

Goldstien: What did you do after you got the phone call? Where were you told to report to?

DaSilva: Well, our post is in Hialeah, on the outskirts of Hialeah, it’s right near the Golden Glades Interchange, and we have an office building because again we are in the National Guard Armory on 27th Avenue, but because we are an intelligence unit, and a new unit, we were good enough to get an office. And, they still had power and water and everything there. They called and, as a matter of fact, I parked my car in here so I just rolled my car out and made it up the Palmetto and all I had to do was grab all my gear and went.

Goldstien: What about once you got there? Were you sent out immediately?

DaSilva: No. When I got there, there was mass confusion, to put it mildly. That is nothing unusual for the military, but because we were a new unit, because we were a specialized unit, and because we were an intelligence unit. The National Guard is part of the Army, but it’s basically an extension of the state. It’s run by the government. We respond to whatever the government, like riots and stuff like that. Most National Guard Units are given riot training. Legally you have to get a certain amount of hours of riot training. You have to have the shield and the face mask and all this other stuff to go out and do riot response. My unit does not have that mission because we are a specialized unit and we have not had that training. So, the first confusion was, “Here we are, what do we do?” In addition to that, being a relatively new unit, we had very little of our equipment that were actually authorized. We had no vehicles as a matter of fact. We had one 2 ½ ton truck and that was the extent of our equipment. We are supposed to have Humvee’s(?) and all this other stuff. We had no radios yet because again we had been doing basically going away to different schools and supporting different missions in various parts of the world. Where we use the active duty equipment, we haven’t gotten any of our equipment yet. So between not having the training, not having a street mission, and not having enough equipment, we were sitting there for about a couple of hours trying to figure out exactly what we were going to do. At this time, the Battalion commander and the company commander and everybody up at the Battalion level were in meetings and in correspondence with the National Guard to try and figure out where we were going to go, what we were going to do, and what the needs were at the time. So, we were kind of in a little confusion. We were trying to get out equipment together, what we had, and try to get things going, but we were really didn’t know what was going to happen.

Goldstien: What did happen? What did you end up doing?

DaSilva: Well, we have a sister company, which happened to be at an armory in Homestead and as a matter of fact, at that time we were in the process of, again with very strict security measures for weapon storage, we were in the process of putting our weapons container in our building and getting certified so that we can keep out M16’s in. And they weren’t, they were in the Homestead armory, that’s where we were keeping all our weapons, what weapons we did have. It turns out that that building was just about flattened, and a couple of hours before I got there we had 3 or 4 soldiers from my company and a lieutenant in my company go down there and respond to it and try and secure the place as best as possible. As a matter of fact, I heard, I did not make it to that site, but what I heard was that the building was completely down and that the only thing standing was the weapon storage container, and they had people try and break in there and try and steal the weapons, and they had to go down there and secure that. We had one radio at that time. We managed to get a radio and we were in communication a little bit with the National Guard and with them down there, and they were really screaming for reinforcements because there were only, I think, four of them at the time. Four of five of them, and it is a large facility or at least the fenced in part, and again that was basically rubble and the weapons container, and they really couldn’t hold the type of looters and people that were coming in there, and they were really worried about the weapons. Our main concern right then was, I had about half of my platoon, and I said to the company commander, “Sir, we are ready. Let us just go down there.” As a matter of fact, quite a few of the members in our company are police officers or security guards, things of that nature, and a lot of them have, we have our own weapons, personal weapons, and luckily we had those because again at the time we were unarmed and because we had our personal weapons, it is very illegal from Florida standards, I mean we are not supposed to be doing that, but given the situation, we said, “Hey, prosecute us afterwards! We will take our own weapons.” But we had our own weapons, we said, “Hey, Sir, let us go on down. We are ready, let’s go.” Then, again, with the vehicle problem. We had a problem getting the vehicles and everything like that. As it turned out, we did manage to scrape up about over 15, if I remember right, soldiers and send them down there. Unfortunately, they would not let me go because I was needed back there to organize the upcoming missions that they were working on at higher headquarters. I wish I could have gone.

Goldstien: What is your rank?

DaSilva: I am a captain.

Goldstien: Did you eventually get down to Homestead?

DaSilva: I didn’t get to Homestead. I got to Cutler Ridge because what happened was there was a reserve, a special forces unit, in the area and also the 124th Infantry of the National Guard. The Ballard Armory was in the area, and both of these units diverted teams to the Homestead area, and we pulled our weapons out because of the issue basically. We took all our weapons up to the unit and everybody had their weapons. Plus, that was at the time I said when they were transferring storage and we started storing them in the armory up there. So we took them all out of Homestead so we organized to go to Cutler Ridge because the mission that came down was the Cutler Ridge mission, and basically the Homestead mission was kind of taken away from us.

Goldstien: What was the Cutler Ridge mission?

DaSilva: Down at the South Dade Government Center. What happened was there was a national emergency medical team. That’s the exact title, I think, and I don’t know who they come under. What they have are disaster response teams all around the country and whenever something happens, they’re all on call basically for a certain amount each month or each week, and when something happens whoever is on call gets the mission and they go to wherever that is in the nation, and it turns out that the one that was on call at that time was from North Carolina, and these people were fantastic! The National Emergency Medical Team, what they do is they come down to devastated areas, whether it be hurricane, flood, whatever, and they just set up shop with nothing. And the Government Center was hit real hard; all the trees were down, some of the second floor was caved in, and some of the rooms were un-useful. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down there to see their facilities, but what they did was they came in and they took over the first floor, and it’s a M*A*S*H unit. Basically they set up a hospital and they just, they bring their own water, they bring their own food, they bring their own generators, they bring their own medical equipment, and set up from zero. I don’t know what their mission statement is, but I would say that within 1224 hours they are a working hospital. And, again, because we didn’t have a street mission what they needed was they needed security for that building for two reasons: Because patients were in there and they were getting a flood of wounded from the hurricane, and that was the major drop-off point for all the relief supplies, and predominantly the medical relief supplies. All these prescription drugs and things were coming into that place. I don’t know how many millions of dollars of equipment to easily fill this room. That’s the amount of drugs that they had. And, because our unit is basically a linguistic unit, predominantly Spanish, they needed the linguist assets because again this team was from North Carolina and very few of them, I think maybe one, spoke Spanish. That’s basically what our mission was. They gave us the facility to secure, basically it was our building. We worked for them, whatever they needed we did, but the security was ours. We set up the security as we saw fit depending upon what their needs were, and basically that’s it. And we gave people translations and things like that.

Goldstien: How long were you down doing that particular assignment?

DaSilva: That was the first I think couple of weeks, two and a half weeks, or the first two and a half weeks. I think from the first day or night, I think on for about two and a half weeks in basically a rotation type. We had teams two teams actually, and we would go on 24 hours and come off 24 hours and then we would go back to the armory, and basically because they had hot meals, and try to shower and sleep. Then when we woke up we basically planned whatever mission did come up because we did get other linguist missions and certain other things that they needed our assets for. So we would decide then planning a mission every day, knowing the main mission was the South Dade Center, and these are what we needed for this mission and these are the assets that we have between having people taken away for other missions. So, basically, we were planning a mission every day.

Goldstien: What were some of those other missions?

DaSilva: Well, they had some units on patrol and again we don’t have a street mission and technically we couldn’t do riot instances, but what we did do was we had people accompany some of the patrols that went out because again the 124th infantry is just that  an infantry unit, whereas we’re a linguist unit. The patrols ran into obviously a lot of Spanishspeaking people, so they basically took a translator with them, and we had different people depending upon what their mission was at the time, where they were going, what they expected to do. A lot of it was going to certain areas, certain Homestead areas, that were the most devastated areas and searching for survivors, so they obviously wanted to do this with Spanishspeaker fluency.

Goldstien: What was the most interesting thing that happened to you in the first couple of weeks? Most noteworthy?

DaSilva: I can think of a couple of things. I don’t know if they’re interesting or noteworthy, but I think from the time we went down there, when we went down the turnpike, and from the ride from Hialeah down, and as it got progressively worse, it was almost like we were in the Twilight Zone. You know, here we are in civilization, and here we’re going to a thirdworld country, and it really, in places, resembled a war zone, and I know that’s been used by other people, but there’s really just no other way to describe it. When we passed the Holiday Inn down there and the whole side wall, I don’t know if you saw that, was off. You could see into every room from the turnpike, and that was amazing to see something like that, like looking at a doll house. And then when we got down there and saw the type of job that the medical unit was doing and the flood of patients that were there, I think that if you’ve ever seen M*A*S*H, just take that out of military context and put it into civilian context and that was exactly what they were doing, just short of, maybe they even did, perform surgery, but just short of that. Patients were coming in one door and going out the other and left and right. And again, in addition to that, it was a major dropoff point for supplies, equipment, and for volunteers coming down. There were an awful lot of volunteers from all across the country who were converging there and then they would send out some from there to different areas. And that was kindof interesting at times to see all this happening and see how people would really come to the rescue, and I think that with the amount of people coming in there, from my standpoint, and again from the standpoint of a leader because I had my platoon down there securing the building and doing the translations and I was running around trying to supervise this and certain missions, so I really got an opportunity to see an awful lot as opposed to being in one place doing a job. And the type of people that were coming in and the state of mind that they were in after experiencing the hurricane and being in a home that was leveled, half the time the type of injuries they had, and some of them that came in that literally hadn’t eaten for two days, seeing what the medical team did to alleviate their pain and again from my standpoint and what my people did. We brought our own food down there, some meals ready to eat that everyone talked about, and we literally gave them away because people were coming in and they hadn’t eaten, with four kids, and they hadn’t eaten in I don’t know how many hours. And one of my lieutenants literally took out all of her food that we were given for the 24 hours, plus we get a little bit more. She just pulled it all out and started feeding some of the kids. That’s very interesting to see people like that and think we’re here and people are basically being jerks to each other and it takes something like that for people to be considerate human beings. I thought that was very interesting. Although, another very interesting thing, which I thought, I don’t know when it occurred, it occurred I think later in the first week, but a Doberman happened to wander into the hospital in the area and you could see it was very dehydrated, very tired, very exhausted, and it hadn’t eaten. One of the nurses tried to feed it and it was too exhausted it couldn’t even eat. They put water down for it and it took maybe a sip and couldn’t even drink it. They even took some of the medical supplies, I think it’s called pedialite(?) and they put the pedialite in it and again he took a sip, but that’s about it, and then it laid down for a while. They were really worried about it, and a couple of hours later, the main doctor from that medical team, it’s actually a federal position, came out. He just finished his shift and had a meeting to go to, with I guess some of the disaster relief people, and on his way out someone mentioned something about this dog, and he looked it over and, as a matter of fact, he owns a farm in North Carolina and does all his own procedures to his animals. So he does know a little bit about veterinary medicine, and he put an IV into the dog, and they actually filmed it. He wasn’t supposed to do it and he knew he was going to get into big trouble, especially if that hit the news media, because here’s this hurricane, you know, medical facility and all these wounded people coming in and the country’s responding and sending all these supplies and what are they doing with it? They’re putting an IV in this dog. But it was interesting. I thought it was interesting because they take the muzzle off and put the IV in. They re-hydrated him with 2 bottles, or whatever they put in, they re-hydrated him. As a matter of fact, about 48 hours later, a couple had come in because that facility had started giving out tetanus shots, and a couple had come in because they had caught some nails somewhere and they saw the dog, and one of the nurses mentioned to them what had happened, and they took the dog with them and gave it a home supposedly. I thought that was very interesting.

Goldstien: What were you assigned on duty as a result of the storm?

DaSilva: For myself, that was kind of a strange situation to start with. We ran those operations I think for 3 weeks, if I remember it right. I mean the exact operation with the hospital, because what they did was they started deemphasizing the facilities when Homestead Hospital opened up. Then they shifted from there, alright, so they essentially closed that down and made it again the Government Center and moved different people in there for whatever reasons. But what we did was we had a strange situation. When we knew that we were going to be activated, for an extended period of time, one of the first things people considered was a: we had soldiers in our unit that had homes and families in devastated area and here we needed to get them out because here they are, they left their homes the same morning and left their families stranded to respond to their duty and we had to take care of that. We also had a number of fulltime students, me being one of them, and they were concerned about the schools starting to reopen and not messing that up, the whole semester. What they did was they stated essentially an order of merit list, but actually it was an order of priority list of people. First, who had damaged homes and families and then fulltime students and then third on that list, although it really doesn’t count for National Guard reserves, are people with job problems. Technically, your jobs are supposed to be waiting for you, but we know how that game is played. Some employers, say 4 or 5 months later, after aggravation coming back from Desert Storm, for instance, a lot of people were fired and a given bad evaluation, not because of the Soldiers and Sailors Act, no matter how many people say it’s a great and wonderful thing, a lot of employers did away with it. So we really wanted to respond to, again, third on that list were people who knew that they were going to have job problems. And as it turned out, when we made this list, we went to each soldier in order on the list and said, for instance, the guys in devastated areas, also a couple of them, had jobs in the area and had no jobs anymore so we went to them and said, “OK, you’re on the list. You can go home and take care of your family.” They said, “Well I have no job now, so leave me on active duty and I’ll get paid.” So they elected to stay and the unit did make arrangements where they could at least go and check on their families. So we started, I think the unit itself was deactivated, I think some time in November. We still had people on active duty in November, stayed on active duty in November, but along around a day before school started was when I was deactivated.

Goldstien: There’s a lot of criticism that I’ve heard from people within the Guard, a lot of upsets about how things were handled. I know it’s a sensitive issue with you being in the military, but what were the good things that happened and what were the bad things?

DaSilva: Yeah, I would say it’s a sensitive issue but, from my standpoint, I think after that paper I turned into you, I think you know my opinion. As a matter of fact, sometimes I get into trouble in my unit because I believe in doing my duty and I believe in what I’m serving for, but I don’t like a lot of the bureaucratic games they play, and as an officer technically I’m required to play those games, but as a person I don’t play those games, and I’m usually the one that opens my mouth and sometimes I get a little reprimand for it. But, what I thought was good, again, I thought my unit, maybe not our higher headquarters, and I have a lot of complaints about higher headquarters and the Florida National Guard in general, and for that matter active duty because we had to deal with the 82nd Airborne and I’ll probably tell you a couple of stories myself, I think we responded as quickly and as efficiently as we could given the fact that we had no mission. There was a lot of confusion, very little equipment. I think we got organized very quickly and responded to at least what we thought was needed or where we were told to go at the time, and I think that was very good because again military is usually very chaotic and when you’re on any kind of mission it’s very confusing and people don’t know what’s going on half the time. I think the way we organized it and the way we ended up getting some of our equipment very quickly and going down and actually assisting the people, that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to get down there and we wanted to assist the people. We didn’t want to mess around sitting in the Armory. We didn’t want to mess around having people tell us, “Well, this is your mission. No, wait a minute, this is going to be your mission.” Change here, change there. Let’s get out there and let’s do it! And I think for whatever people say about the National Guard, I think we did a hell of a job getting out there as fast as we did.

Goldstien: What were the screwups?

DaSilva: Very big, actually, very big screwups, and that’s because from my perception I think, and like I said I’m a U.S. Paratrooper and you know I’m motivated and everything and if needed I’ll do it and all this other stuff, there’s a limit to all this testosterone. When the 82nd Airborne  they really have an attitude, and granted they’re warriors and they’re taught to have an attitude and in combat you have to have an attitude or else you’re gonna die, but when they come down sometimes they exhibit themselves. They really treat the National Guard, first of all, like they’re nothing, and that’s the way the whole active duty looks at the National Guard. The only reason that I got any of the little respect that I did is because I had Airborne wings on my chest, and you know I’m a paratrooper, so they treated me with a little bit of respect. Other than that they treated all of my people like dirt. In addition to that, I think because of the level of exposure that this whole situation got, for instance, when the 82nd first came down, the Government Center again was a major dropoff point, so they decided to make division headquarters in that building. And most of the upstairs was kindof devastated, but there were a couple of courtrooms there that were useable, and they decided to make their offices in those courtrooms, and it’s kindof funny actually. A funny story, about two o’clock in the morning the first night they were in, I was walking around checking my posts and one of my lieutenants, one of my team leaders, was at the front door where I was usually stationed when I wasn’t checking around. And I just came through the hospital section and little did I know but, I think his name was Earnst, Brigadier General Earnst, the DCO Deputy Commander of the 82nd, was the first commander on site, and he came walking up with his two puppy officers behind him with the spitshined boots and starched uniform and all this other stuff, and I didn’t know they were there. My lieutenant was the first one that saw him and stood up and saluted traditional attention, and there were two double doors into the hospital into the hallway where they were, and what I didn’t know was he had walked up, introduced himself, and said, “Who’s in charge of this facility Lieutenant?” And that’s when he said “Captain DaSilva, Sir,” and as he was saying this I’m walking through these double doors and I’m staring this general in the face and I, caught kindof by surprise, and I said, “Oh, hi Sir.” But anyway it’s kindof funny. Like I said, they have an attitude and the way he introduced himself was, “Good morning, Captain. Brigadier General Earnst, 82nd Airborne...” and something ridiculous like that. It was obviously a rehearsed speech, and he came in and told us that he had just gotten off the aircraft at OpaLocka and they were coming down to pick out where the division was going to put their headquarters. So he wanted to tour the building, and looked around and decided what offices they were going to take from the hospital. And the thing I didn’t like, and I don’t think the medical team liked it too much, was again they made their presence known. They came in, decided that this was our [their] headquarters and we’re going to take whatever we need. We had confrontations with them due to that, predominantly because the whole downstairs was used on medical teams, and again the hospital was one section, but they had offices and things in other areas encompassing the whole first floor, and the only way you could get up was go through the lobby to the second floor where they wanted to take over. And, we had injured people and medical people and supplies and everything going in and out all over the place, and again when the medical team came in they basically set up. The place was devastated. It looked like a war zone. It looked like the building had been shelled and no one actually cleaned anything, for instance, any glass off the floor. Basically, people just kindof moved stuff out of the way and made tracks to where they needed to get to and what they needed to do, and they came in and started pushing people aside and telling people what they’re going to do and where they’re going to go and what building they’re going to take and all this other stuff, and they started moving their division headquarters in and basically told us what they’ve already coordinated with the Florida National Guard, that we’re going to keep our own mission. But, they’ve now taken over the building, so we are basically their security guards, and the funny part was, and I know you saw from the news probably, that they weren’t issued ammunition, which is a completely ridiculous thing. That I think caused a little problems, not for us but for them. But I think it caused some coordination problems because this word did get out to people, and when they found out that the 82nd were walking around with empty M16’s, as a matter of fact, a couple of them were stolen because a couple of people went up to them, put guns to their heads, and said, “Hey, we know you don’t have any ammunition so just hand over the weapon,” and a couple of them got stolen. We did have ammunition because again the Florida National Guard is part of law enforcement and we were issued ammunition, and again some of us had our own weapons and ammunition. And, again, that caused problems because, for instance, we had one gentleman show up one night, I think his mother was being treated in the hospital, and he was sitting outside waiting. And so there was an 82nd M.P. out front, again because they made their presence known, even though I was on the post and my soldier was on the post, they had to put one of their M.P.’s out there to show off the beret, and this guy walked up to him and said something like, “Is it true you guys have no ammunition?” This M.P. was kindof confused because the guy had a very thick Latin accent and he’s kindof hard to understand, and I guess this kid was just kindof real taken by that, and so I went up and said, “How you doing? What’s going on?” And the guy started talking and I was talking to him. He said his mother was being treated and all this other stuff and he said, “These soldiers aren’t sent out without ammunition,” he said, “The government doesn’t do that, so the army doesn’t do it, right?” So I pulled out my own 9mm, pulled it open, and said, “Look, of course we have ammunition,” and put it back in. This M.P. just looked at me. He knew that I got him out of this jam here. And, as a matter of fact, I think I had a roll of Tootsie Rolls from one of my MRE’s that I had in my pocket, and again this was another guy who hadn’t eaten for a while, so I gave him that at the time and kindof talked to him for a bit. I think that settled the M.P. down because some of them were worried because they didn’t have ammunition, and that word was getting around. That caused some problems I think. I think a couple of things that I noticed which really annoyed me, again with the 82nd and the situation, General Berber came down, and that was publicized, for a briefing. And I can’t remember when that was, but about 12 hours before General Berber came in and they were going to brief him on the whole operation, this was after the whole division was in place, they were going to use one of the courtrooms to brief him on the operation, and about 12 hours before he got there they had everybody in there cleaning that place spotless. Trees were being moved. Everything was being moved off the front stairs. Anything that was broken was removed. They had cleaning crews, I mean a company they had contracted, to come in and clean the Government Center  the inside, the lobby with the escalators, and the glass on the side, and all this other stuff. I mean cleaned it spotless. Not the military, they contracted a cleaning service like ARA or somebody to come in and do this. And clean the place spotless alright, and they were pushing our people, and what annoyed me was that they were pushing patients out of the way to do this. And I almost, if my company commander wasn’t there at one point, I almost lost it because again they’re pushing patients out of the way, and I said, “Wait,” and it was somebody who outranked me very much, like lieutenant coloneltype from the 82nd who was doing what the general wanted because they’re getting ready for this big briefing, and I thought that was absolutely ridiculous and completely contrary to what they were supposed to be doing.

Goldstien: How many days after the storm was this?

DaSilva: To tell you the truth, I really can’t remember. I remember it was exactly, and you can probably figure this out from the dates, but it was exactly when the whole division was in place and they had all the assets in place. It was the first visit that General Berber made to check on everybody.

Goldstien: Was this like a week or...?

DaSilva: I would say a week and a half, maybe two weeks. Somewhere around that time.

Goldstien: Not two or three days after though?

DaSilva: Oh, no, no, no. This was after the division was down there, when the division was in place, and when they started doing all the public relations. As a matter of fact, that same day General Earnst was in and out of the building, and he was upstairs in his office, which was one of the courtrooms, I imagine probably the judge’s bench, and he was up there and we had a lady and gentleman come in and introduce themselves as official representatives of the Saudi government, and they had offered X-amount of money and had Xamount of supplies and they said just tell us where you want it all. And they made them wait! And these people are sitting in the lobby, and I went and checked my post, and I came back it was about a halfhour later, and they were still sitting in the lobby, and I went and I had to do something else and I came back and it was an hour later, and they’re still sitting in the lobby, and my company commander came in and again he was checking different areas, and I went up and I said, “Hey, Sir, these people are here from the Saudi government waiting to see the commander of the 82nd, and they have all this money and all these supplies and they’re trying to figure out what to do with it. They’ve been sitting out there for at least an hour now.” And if it wasn’t for my company commander, I think, who went and rattled because he’s a major, so at least he has more of a right than me and also he is special forces qualified so that gets a little more respect too you know, he has that tab on his shoulders, so he went and rattled somebody’s chain, and I guess they ended up talking to these people about 15 minutes later, but I just couldn’t believe that they would actually do that. I mean, that’s the kind of pompous attitude that I think the active duty, particularly units like that, have. I have the ultimate respect for their warrior ability, but from a bureaucratic standpoint, that’s the kind of things that, and part of the reason I got out of the army, because there’s an attitude like that. I just couldn’t believe they did that and...

Goldstien: This will be very interesting stuff to quote. I want to make sure that you want to have it quoted. Will this cause you any trouble?

DaSilva: Probably not.

Goldstien: What about afterwards? How were you personally affected? When you got back, how was your daily life affected?

DaSilva: I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back to school because again we made this order of priorities and again what they were going to do is, based on the mission that we had, they were only going to release a certain amount of people, and if it was only three people, remember I said the first priority were people in devastated areas, we had I think five or six people in devastated areas, but they were only going to release three. Alright, then we would make a priority out of those six and then take the top three, and that’s the way it was going to work. So, I fell in I don’t know where on the list, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to get released for school or not, and that obviously would have put me in a position here where they would have obviously had to put somebody in this position or have taken this job away from me, but somebody had to be here, and I was really worried that not only was I not going to be able to start school, but I was not going to be able to retain this position. And, luckily I was released for school, but that really did, it was a major concern for me.

Goldstien: Did you get involved in major stuff back here?

DaSilva: Like what?

Goldstien: Well, getting the campus reestablished? Getting things back on track?

DaSilva: Well, what I actually got an opportunity to do when we started, again, when the outside duty asked us to get out here, and again because the National Guard doesn’t have field kits and things like that, and the marines on active duty wanted to get down here and set up and stuff because they had the assets, we started deferring our missions when they closed down the hospital, the M*A*S*H unit, and opened up Homestead Hospital, and they started diverting our missions to more of a linguist. As a matter of fact, I was mad. The whole tine we were being security guards at this facility, we knew that our linguist assets could be used elsewhere because of the situation, and the active duty people weren’t paying attention to that, which was also frustrating. Not that we didn’t care about what we were doing, but we knew that there, we realized by then, that there were other missions out there where they needed Spanishspeakers, they needed the linguist assets, and we said, “Wait a minute, now why are they doing this? Here we are, take our unit, that’s what we’re for.” No one was really paying attention, and one night a team of medics came in led by a lieutenant, and I can’t remember what post they’re from, they were active duty, but they weren’t from the 82nd, and they were waiting to see the 82nd commander because they were lead element for medical teams that were coming in to run their missions, and there happened to be a colonel from I think it was the 48th med, or whatever it was. It was up with the 82nd, and they made their headquarters upstairs also with the 82nd, and I was in the lobby and I happened to hear this colonel briefing this lieutenant, and the lieutenant says, “Yeah, we have 67 medical teams coming in,” and this colonel says, “Well, how many of them do you have that speak Spanish?” And this lieutenant said, “Well, on my team I have one, and on the other teams I don’t if they have any they may have one or two.” And that’s when I said, “Sir, I need to talk to you.” And here the whole time we were trying to go through the Florida National Guard, through higher headquarters, and are screaming and yelling at people to say, “Wait a minute, this is our mission. This is our assets, these are our assets. This is what we can do for you,” and no one was paying attention, and I got together with this colonel and I said, “This is what our unit is, this is what we do, and this is what we’re doing here.” And he said, “You’re a Godsend. Where can I get, who is your commander, where can I get a hold of him?” I explained who he could contact and he said, “This is exactly what we need.” So, when they started deactivating the hospital they diverted our assets, and again they sent more of our people out on patrol so that they could speak Spanish. They sent more people out with the medical teams so they could speak Spanish, and they started opening the food stamp facilities, so they started sending people out there to translate also. So I thought that was pretty good. It was finally, we were starting to get to do things that our missions were suited for.

Goldstien: How long was that after the Hurricane?

DaSilva: That was probably at the second week mark, easily three or four days after the 82nd got into place.

Goldstien: Have you been back down there since school started?

DaSilva: Not since, no, not since. I’ve seen, as a matter of fact, I saw one picture on the news where they did something to the Government Center, you know, some news story, and I was just, I looked at it and I said, “Wow, it looks really different now.” But, no, I haven’t been down there since.

Goldstien: Do you see any positive outcomes as a result of the Hurricane, or maybe as a result of what you’ve done?

DaSilva: Again, the positive outcome, I think it was a situation that solidified the community a little bit certainly, and I think, from an individual standpoint also, I think it made a lot of people realize that the guy nextdoor, or the girl nextdoor, who they either see the cars going in and out of the driveway every day and that’s the only contact they have with them, you know, here’s what happens when everybody needs something everyone’s there. And from our standpoint, the National Guard standpoint, you know, a lot of people say, “Well, weekend warriors, what do you do? You waste a weekend a month or you go for a weekend a month and what do you do? You’re taking government money. You do very little,” whatever. Well, this is what we do. When something like this happens, we have people who have families and homes like that drop everything and go, and I think that just strengthens the attitude. It’s a morale booster. I mean, and it’s sad to say that a thing like that would be a morale booster, but afterwards you really look at it and say, you know, this is what you do it for because sometimes it does get very difficult and frustrating with the bureaucracy and a lot of the stupid traditions that the military has and things that they make us do and some of the training, you say, “Wait a minute. What are we doing this for? This doesn’t have any real world mission or purpose.” And afterwards you look at it and you say, “Well, you know, some of the things we did, I’m glad we prepared for those.” And then also we say, “Well, some of the things we did that we were complaining that were stupid, well we realize now they really are stupid, so we don’t need to do them anymore.” And higher headquarters looks at that and said, “You know, you’re right. You complained that this really doesn’t make any sense, and we don’t need to do that anymore.”

Goldstien: Besides the fact that it is basically a responsibility and a duty for you because you are a part of the National Guard, would you be willing to do it again if a similar storm were to hit here or anywhere else?

DaSilva: Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, now that you mentioned anywhere else, one of the big problems also I think that the Florida National Guard had in deploying was that they deployed units from this area. In other words, again, we had people in devastated areas drop everything and come in. The way it should be was if a hurricane hits Jacksonville, we drop everything and go up there and help them. Alright, a hurricane hits here, so they come down and help us, and that didn’t happen. But, yeah, absolutely. That’s why we all do it.

Goldstien: Anything that you would like to add? This is your chance for history.

DaSilva: I think overall, like I said, I think it was, in a strange way, a very positive learning experience, and I think the people who were involved in it, not only just victims, but people who were involved whether they’re from this area or again, like the medical teams, from out of state or anybody that responded. I think it was a very sobering experience, and I think it really has taught a lot of people that, again, we’re talking about a major breakdown of society here and there and crime and schools and all this other stuff, and when the chips are down and we’re there, and Americans really get together when something needs to be done. I wish that we could extend this to the other problems that we have like education and crime and the budget deficit and our political problems and all this other stuff.