View a slideshow of scenes from Katrina’s aftermath.
Mike Maroney isn’t the type of guy that seeks attention. As a seasoned Air Force pararescueman, his job entails secrecy. And as a member of the U.S. military, most of his jobs don’t happen in the States.
But 10 years ago, when Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, creating a swath of destruction from Mobile, Ala., to New Orleans, the Santa Maria native’s work did take place on home soil.
Katrina formed over the Bahamas on Aug. 23, 2005, ballooning into a massive Category 5 storm. It dropped down to a large Category 3 hurricane as it made landfall on the southeastern tip of Louisiana six days later. According to a National Weather Service (NWS) assessment published in June 2006, Katrina directly killed more than 1,300 people and damaged or destroyed more than 275,000 homes. Heavy winds wedged an oil rig under the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge in Mobile, while broken levees in New Orleans left 80 percent of the city underwater, trapping thousands of residents inside homes and on rooftops.
With winds of 125 miles per hour and a central pressure of 920 millibars (the greater the pressure, the faster the winds), the NWS ranks Katrina as the third most intense land-falling hurricane on record.
There are mixed feelings on disaster response and preparation. But there are also stories about the rescuers who made sure more people weren’t added to the death toll. Several members of the military and even Hollywood celebrities did their part. But as Sean Penn was getting news coverage for his rescue efforts, Maroney was dropping out of a helicopter, plucking hundreds of New Orleanians out of harm’s way. He was just doing his job.
“I was never really scared that anything bad was going to happen,” Maroney said. “I was there to save people.”
According to Maroney’s count, he saved 142 people in the week following Katrina. For the 10th anniversary, the Sun interviewed Maroney about his experience in Katrina’s aftermath. Now in his early 40s and on the cusp of entering civilian life, Maroney often thinks about the people he rescued, including a little girl who is depicted with him in an iconic photo. But he doesn’t know who she is. He’s hoping to find and reunite with the little girl he rescued.
The job
As an Air Force pararescueman (or “PJ”), Maroney’s job is to save people’s lives. They’re essentially combat emergency medical technicians and are considered to be an Air Force elite combat force. To earn this status, PJs must pass a grueling two-year pipeline that tests the boundaries of individual physical and mental strength. Maroney ran (literally) through the gamut of schools in preparation to be a PJ: dive, survival, airborne, EMT, and parachute freefall schools, among others. The dropout rate for PJ school is around 80 percent, according to pararescue.com.
This didn’t deter Maroney, who entered PJ school in November 1996 following his graduation from Allan Hancock College. Even for a guy like Maroney, the school was tough, or “a kick in the nuts,” as he said.
It took him three tries to pass. The first time, he couldn’t pass an exercise that required him to bob up in down in a pool with 40 pounds of lead. He was rolled back, and broke his ankle on the second try. After two weeks of pounding Motrin and resting up, he resumed training and eventually passed. Upon graduation, as Maroney explains it, he weighed 130 pounds, had pneumonia, and his ankle was still partially broken.
“I crawled out of that school,” Maroney said. “I was too dumb to quit.”
The job took Maroney on hundreds of missions far and away: through Mozambique, Iraq, the Philippines, and elsewhere. He’s experienced combat and has been to more funerals than he prefers to remember. He was resting up after completing a harrowing tour in Afghanistan in 2005 when he received orders for a search and rescue mission in New Orleans.
The call
When the storm cleared, it first appeared as if New Orleans survived a beating. But that feeling was short-lived as up to 50 breaches (according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) in the federal levee system throughout the city dumped seawater into the bowl that is New Orleans. This was especially problematic because the majority of the city sits below sea level.
Even after the mandatory evacuation, more than 100,000 people still remained in the city. Tens of thousands of volunteers and military troops headed toward the region as part of an extensive rescue effort.
At the time, Maroney was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, raising his two sons, who were both toddlers. He was starting to train again after finishing in Afghanistan. He remembered seeing the storm on TV, but didn’t think he’d actually go. Then the call came.
Within 18 hours of the storm, Maroney was on a flight to a National Guard base in Jackson, Miss. Once he got there, they didn’t waste any time.
“We offloaded everything off the helicopter and flew straight to New Orleans, and it was about an hour flight, and once we got there we just started picking up people,” Maroney recalls.
He arrived on Aug. 30. As he flew into the city, the destruction began to dawn on him.
“It was crazy,” he said. “You’ve seen New Orleans before, and before New Orleans, it was a normal city, houses, everything looks normal. You come back in, and there’s water everywhere and the sky’s on fire. You can’t see from here to 2 miles because the smoke density. Everything’s under water. You have one side of town where the levee broke. The levee breaks and all the houses were off their foundations. And so you’ve got the fires because the houses broke the gas lines and flames were going everywhere. Houses are everywhere. As you get deeper into the city, the water’s so high that the tops of roofs look like stepping stones. That’s what it looked like.”
Maroney worked in tandem with other military units from the Coast Guard, National Guard, and the U.S. Navy. His job began immediately. Dressed in his desert camouflage uniform (or DCU) and strapped to a rig from a hovering SH-60 Seahawk helicopter, Maroney repeatedly dropped into the hot zone, rescuing survivors surrounded by water.
“We would pick up people off of bridges, trees, houses, people sitting on top of their cars—maybe they had a tall van or something—people were just everywhere,” Maroney said.
It was a brutal day-in, day-out operation for Maroney lasting more than a week in the sweltering, mosquito-filled Deep South summer. He’d fly to New Orleans, conduct rescue operations for 12 hours nonstop, then fly back to Jackson. Add a few more hours for flight and crew checks, and it ended up being a 16-hour day.
And it was hazardous.
In order to rescue some people, Maroney had to get in the water, which he remembers smelling like warm urine. On top of the stew of every household cleaner and industrial chemical in the water, it was also filled with roaming alligators and downed power lines. During one rescue attempt, Maroney ended up swallowing a tiny bit of water.
“I drank the water and three weeks after that my stomach couldn’t handle any food,” Maroney said. “It was bad.”
He’d ruin his uniform each time he dipped into the water. There was no point in washing it as the smell would never go away. He would come back exhausted and simply burn his uniform before crashing out for the night inside his room at the Motel 6.
The hug
Maroney remembers instances of desperation as he did everything in his power to save people. He remembers picking up one man, who was having a heart attack, but could do nothing else as the helicopter rushed toward the rendezvous point. Maroney remembers feeling helpless at that moment.
But there were also times of light-hearted joy, as the survivors came in all characters, including drunk (it is New Orleans after all). In one instance, Maroney remembers picking up an inebriated man who informed him of two elderly women trapped in a house. So what did Maroney do? Holding him by the belt loop, Maroney let the man hang out of the helicopter as he directed rescuers to the house.
In another instance, Maroney remembers occasionally checking in on a group of guys who were camped on a section of bridge. They seemed to be doing fine, and all they asked for was food.
“Every day when we came back, they had refreshed beer,” Maroney said, laughing. “We picked up a lot of drunk people. I figure, what else are you going to do?”
For Maroney, the best moment came after he rescued the little girl in the famous picture. It was Sept. 6 and Maroney was beaten down after a week of rescue operations. He remembers being with the “Hollywood crew,” a medley of cameramen, including an NBC news camera crew and Airman First Class Veronica Pierce, who took the photo of Maroney and the girl. He was worried that the crew was eating the extra space needed for survivors, but there was nothing he could do.
The girl, who Maroney thinks was about 3 or 4 years old at the time, was a part of a family he rescued somewhere in the Ninth Ward, which was among the hardest hit areas in the city. He remembers being lowered from the helicopter and performing a Mary Lou Retton-esque gymnast move in front of the family.
Despite the horrific events transpiring around them, it was a way for Maroney to brighten the situation while easing the minds of the survivors, some of whom had gone days without food or water.
As the helicopter landed at Armstrong International Airport, the girl suddenly embraced Maroney, and Pierce snapped the picture. It was an emotional moment for Maroney, especially after coming off of his worst overseas deployment, where rescuing survivors was rare.
“That hug helped me in a dark time,” Maroney said. “I tell people, the first time one of the boys [his sons] came up to me and gave me a hug and said I love you, just for no reason—not because I did something, but just out of the blue gives you a hug and says ‘I love you dad’—that’s where that hug sits.”
Maroney remembers telling her that he had a little boy the same age as her.
But almost as soon as she hugged him, Maroney had to drop her off and continue with his mission. He is often asked why he never asked for her name. But Maroney’s explanation is simple.
“You’re not asking them questions, you’re just making sure they’re OK, and that’s it,” Maroney said. “It’s not that I don’t have time. To me, it just seems impolite to start bugging people.”
After nearly a month of operations, Maroney flew out of the South on Sept. 20, 2005.
The ‘fame’
Elite combat forces guys like Maroney don’t look for the spotlight. In fact, they are highly discouraged from doing so. They’re often referred to as silent professionals.
But somehow Maroney ended up being an icon for Katrina—a good one. Nearly a year after the storm, Maroney was in Iraq when a fellow airman recognized him from the picture taken by Pierce. The photo had gone viral. It was printed on pogs—the flat, circular cardboard disks popular among kids in the early 1990s. He also noticed the photo on placemats in Burger King restaurants on base and phone cards, too.
“It was pretty mind-blowing or monumental, for lack of a better word,” Maroney said. “We don’t do it for the recognition. If I get a smile, I know I did my job, and I’m good.”
Soon, Maroney began appearing on talk shows and in news articles, and getting invited as a special guest to concerts. According to Maroney, the picture of him embracing the girl was the top military photo of the year.
Years later, Maroney would go on to become a PJ instructor at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he is currently stationed.
The rest of his life
Being a PJ was a hard life for Maroney. Over time, jumping out of airplanes and carrying heavy loads took its toll on his body. Years earlier, he dislocated his shoulder trying to lift a 300-pound boat motor. After 300 jumps and 19 years as a PJ, Maroney is being medically discharged, but it’s not by choice.
It’s difficult for Maroney to perform as a PJ instructor. According to Maroney, a fellow instructor pushed the military to oust Maroney as a PJ because he can’t keep up. Maroney tried to fight it, but was unsuccessful. There’s a lawsuit pending against his colleague, according to Maroney, who adds that he’ll have to fight to get a military pension (retirement usually comes after 20 years). Because of his injuries, Maroney is eligible to receive full disability from the Veteran’s Administration.
Maroney is a single father with two sons aged 11 and 13. His father, Wesley Maroney, retired as the police chief for Allan Hancock College in July to help his son and help raise his grandchildren. Wesley calls his son, “his little action hero.”
Maroney will soon return to Santa Maria, but won’t be able to do much work because of his physical disabilities. However, he can still do some things he enjoys, like surfing. He’s also finding a niche in training PJ candidates. Maroney said he’ll train anyone for PJ school as long as they can pay to either fly him out to them, or fly themselves out to Maroney. Recently, he flew to Coco Beach, Fla., to train a couple of guys, taking them on intense ruck hikes and pool swims.
Under the username of Mike Maroney, he runs a YouTube channel where he uploads training videos and answers questions on PJ training. His channel has generated tens of thousands of views in the last year alone and is gaining the interest of hundreds of kids along the Central Coast who want to become PJs. He’s hoping that he can somehow monetize this talent.
In the meantime, Maroney wonders about the little girl. She would be 13 or 14 years old by now. He doesn’t have a clue where she might be and is hoping someone will recognize her. With the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents across the country, she could be anywhere. He’s taking a road trip to New Orleans at the beginning of September for the 10-year commemoration of Katrina and hopes that she’ll turn up. What would he do when he sees her again?
“I just think I’d give her and her mom another hug,” Maroney said.
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 3, 2015.