Braxton Taylor
Hurricane Helene, the deadliest hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. mainland since Katrina, has brought thousands of National Guardsmen and more than a thousand active-duty troops to states across the Southeast to help deliver supplies, clear roads and rescue trapped survivors.
There’s another thing the military could be doing in the eyes of the two senators from North Carolina, the state hit hardest by the storm: appoint an active-duty commander to lead the recovery efforts.
It’s an idea that could be helpful, the general who led the federal task force that responded to Hurricane Katrina told Military.com.
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Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led Task Force Katrina that coordinated the federal government’s response to the devastating 2005 storm along the Gulf Coast, told Military.com in a phone interview that an active-duty, three-star general would have more resources than the one-star National Guard general leading the military’s response to Helene.
An active-duty commander would bring “a bigger headquarters that is trained to deal with air, land and water, sea-type events, that’s got a big public affairs staff, that’s got operation cells, and they can collaborate [on] larger operations,” Honoré said.
“I don’t know the man, but I’m sure he’s a competent guy, but there’s only so much you can do with a small headquarters,” Honoré said of the National Guard general commanding the military personnel responding to Helene.
Brig. Gen. Charles Morrison of the North Carolina National Guard was tapped by U.S. Northern Command to lead both the Guardsmen and active-duty troops that have been deployed to his state, the Pentagon said in a statement last week.
More than 230 people across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee have been killed by Helene, with the death toll likely to continue rising as the search for missing people continues. North Carolina bore the brunt of the destruction, with at least 117 deaths so far.
The federal response to the hurricane has included mobilizing about 1,500 active-duty soldiers from Fort Liberty, North Carolina, and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s recovery efforts. More than 6,000 National Guardsmen from 18 states on state orders are also helping with rescue and relief efforts.
The role that Morrison has, called a dual-status commander, was first established after Hurricane Katrina and allows a National Guard officer to command both Guardsmen and active-duty troops.
“My role is to ensure unity of effort between our National Guard forces, … and now our active-duty military forces that have come in to our assistance,” Morrison said at a news conference in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday. Integration between the active-duty Army and National Guard “has been seamless. Early communication between senior leaders allowed us to make sure that these active-duty forces were equipped properly for the mission at hand.”
In a statement Friday evening, North Carolina’s senators, Republicans Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, were generally complimentary of the recovery efforts so far, but suggested an active-duty commander could bolster the response.
“Our National Guard and local, state and federal first responders on the ground have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster with the resources they have,” Tillis and Budd said in the joint statement. “Given the unprecedented extent of the devastation and complexity of search and rescue operations, it would be helpful to assign an active-duty military leader who has extensive experience with operations of this magnitude to lead moving forward.”
Active-duty military leadership could help “surge resources” to devastated areas, Tillis added in an interview Sunday with CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“The American people and people in North Carolina need to understand, the scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” Tillis said. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a land mass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get the maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations and then, sadly, be there for recovery and rebuilding.”
There’s more precedent in appointing an active-duty military commander to lead hurricane response than just Katrina. More recently, an active-duty three-star led recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.
In the case of Katrina, having an active-duty general at the helm helped streamline communications and expedite support that local officials asked for, because there were fewer approval layers he needed to go through, Honoré said.
“I think people look back at Katrina and say, ‘We have one guy, he put his mug up, he’s the one that gets shot if it was wrong,'” Honoré said. “We spoke with one voice. That’s what people are looking for.”
In a time of rampant rumors and misinformation about the federal government’s response to Helene, an active-duty military leader could also help restore public trust, he added. With Helene, misinformation has been so rampant that FEMA set up a webpage to debunk the biggest myths about the response. Honoré recalled that a large part of his job during Katrina was to hold press conferences and give interviews to dispel false rumors.
“It’s simple stuff, but it’s the type of stuff that reassures the public that somebody’s in charge. Because the public has watched movies. The public’s idea of how shit works is John Wayne in the calvary or on a battlefield telling people what to do,” Honoré said.
“In a real disaster, you’re never really there on time,” he added. “It’s not unusual for people to be upset. People have lost their homes, have lost their businesses, and you got to empathize with them.”
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