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 The Arkansas National Guard remembers its Katrina role By Arkansas National Guard
 LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The Arkansas National Guard began its association with the Hurricane Katrina disaster several days before the storm made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. Before the storm hit, during the initial response and for several months after, the Arkansas National Guard was involved on many fronts in Louisiana and Mississippi. Initially Arkansas’ mission was to open up armories to provide a place for evacuees to shelter. Col. Don Mabry (then a major) worked at the Directorate of Military Support (DOMs) as a plans and operations officer. When the requests for support came in, the Joint Operations Center (JOC) quickly became a hub of coordination and orders to send resources south. On August 29 the request to send 350 Soldiers, Airmen and equipment to Mississippi was received. This became Task Force Razorback. Other requests quickly followed to include the request to evacuate a VA Hospital, provide command and control equipment and several other requests for support. More requests would follow over the coming days and weeks. “I lived in the JOC for several days. I would work 12 hours then someone else would work 12 then we would do it again. I never left the building,” said Mabry. On August 31, Arkansas received a request to provide 200 Airmen and Soldiers from the 142nd, the Air National Guard and 300 more Soldiers from the 39th Infantry Brigade to go to Louisiana. CW4 Jerry Lasiter (then a CW2) was a traditional Soldier when he got the call to go with the 142d military convoy to take equipment, supplies, Soldiers and Airmen to New Orleans. “I was in the front of an enormous convoy. We picked up vehicles at Russellville, Camp Robinson and several other places along the way,” said Lasiter. “By the time we got to Baton Rouge we had over 100 vehicles. We slept where we stopped, I literally slept in my seat behind the wheel, then we woke up and kept driving.” They called ahead to get police escorts; the convoy took two days. Lasiter and the 200 Soldiers and Airmen in the Convoy eventually made it to the Superdome where they helped evacuate thousands who were stranded there. “The people at the Superdome were glad to see us because they knew help had arrived,” said Lasiter. “Water was everywhere. The Superdome was surrounded and the only thing that could ford the water were our trucks.” Lt. Col. Joel Lynch (then a captain with the 3/153 IN) was a traditional Soldier and the S2 for 3-153 Infantry Battalion when he got the call on August 31. He was to report to his headquarters in Warren, Arkansas, to go to New Orleans. “I knew we would need maps so I stopped by Wal-Mart on the way to Warren and bought every road atlas and Louisiana map they had,” said Lynch. “We used those maps for weeks.” On September 1, Lynch and about 50 other Arkansans were on one of the first Arkansas C-130s that flew into Belle Chasse Naval Air Station. More Soldiers flew in later that day. On the 2nd, the Task Force was bused to downtown New Orleans to secure the Morial Convention Center. Over 10,000 people were stranded at the convention center. The news had labeled the situation at the convention center as lawless and overrun by gangs. “We didn’t know what to expect when we got there. I was in the lead LMTV when we pulled up to the corner of the convention center,” Lynch explained. “When we got out we had no trouble with the people. They just knew help was here and they were glad to see us.” The Task Force brought water, MREs, medical help and more importantly, hope, to the thousands of New Orleaneans at the convention center. “The media was everywhere. Once we arrived and secured the area the media came out of the woodwork,” said Lynch. “ABC, NBC, CBS, The Times...every news organization in the world seemed like they were on the ground in the middle of our operation.” The Arkansans did what they could in an area littered with trash, powerless, no running water and it was still summer...hot and humid. The Task Force’s Soldiers and Airmen set up command posts, patrolled the areas and prepared for the next mission. Lt. Col. Mark Lumpkin was in charge of the Task Force from the 39th who lived and worked outside on the pier next to the convention center. They wouldn’t know until the next day what the next mission would be. They would learn that the evacuation of the Superdome and the convention center was next on the enormous list of things that needed to happen.
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