Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sgt. John Parsons and Pfc. Bill Allyn, of Sweet Home returned Sept. 30 from a hurricane relief mission in Louisiana.
Members of the Oregon National Guard Bravo Troop, formerly F Troop, based in Lebanon, they were part of a larger Oregon force of about 1,000 soldiers deployed to the area to help residents suffering after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Parsons, 30, who returned from a tour in Iraq in March, is working at the armory in Lebanon right now. Allyn, 35, works for Ankmar Doors.
“While we were there, we did recovery operations,” Parsons said. That means they helped local authorities assess damage. Their platoon would drive around New Orleans and assess water levels and damage along with keeping criminals out of evacuated areas.
Their reports would go back to engineers who are gearing up to rebuild New Orleans.
After they had worked in New Orleans, Hurricane Rita hit.
“Now it doesn’t look like we did anything,” Allyn said.
“We drove through it,” he said of the second hurricane. The wind blew water over the hood of the Humvee sideways.
Allyn and Parsons initially went to New Orleans. They moved on to Baton Rouge before heading west and south to Alexandria, Lafayette and Opelousas, all northwest of New Orleans.
“Basically, we did recovery in about three different communities,” Allyn said.
They were on their way to Alexandria from Baton Rouge when Rita hit. They were sent to be available for relief operations immediately following the hurricane.
The next day, they handed out food and water and then continued south, Parsons said. They did a security mission at a hospital in Lafayette. It was the only hospital operating in the area.
Allyn joined a mission in Crowley where he helped seniors move back into their retirement home. He ended up helping cook MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for lunch there.
“They were very grateful that we were there,” Allyn said. “Some of them were thrilled we were there because no one was there to help.”
Fire and police resources in the area were stretched thin, Allyn said, and the National Guard put the first emergency crews into many areas.
With the National Guard’s numbers and assets, they were able to get into different areas quickly, Parsons said.
They worked mainly in small, outlying communities, like Sweet Home, although more spread out, Parsons said.
Driving through the devastation of the hurricanes, “I had a strange feeling of being back in Iraq,” Parsons said.
Allyn, who served in the Navy during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, said he’d “never in my life before seen devastation like this.
Parsons said the destruction is beyond words.
“It’s easy to say, yeah, houses were destroyed,” he said, but without pictures or seeing it personally, it is difficult to relate the damage to Lousiana.
In the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, north of the Mississippi river, five to six blocks of houses are just gone, Parsons said. All that is left are the blocks where they once sat.
In one case, Parsons and Allyn drove eight blocks before seeing where one house had been left sitting in the middle of the road.
The pictures shown on television are often aerial, and they do not show the devastation, Allyn said.
The people of Louisiana are resilient, and they are working hard to get on with their lives, Parsons said. Businesses on Bourbon Street were reopening, not necessarily to make money but to show they were still there.
“That motivates me to help people that want to help themselves,” Parsons said. “The people I talked to were thankful for our help, but they were going on with their lives.”
Quite a few people wanted no help, Allyn said. They had food and water, especially in rural areas, and they urged the soldiers on to help other people who did not.
The experience taught Allyn to “be more thankful of the things we’ve got and not to take life for granted,” he said.
“It makes you appreciate things like family and the things you have,” Parsons said. “People there have lost everything they’ve owned, but you don’t worry about things like Gameboys.”
One woman in Lafayette had everything she needed to save in boxes that went with her when she evacuated, Parsons said. Those were things like pictures.
“It’s all about helping people,” Parsons said.
“The reaction of the people, the kids, it was worth it,” Allyn said of the mission.
“It’s a real honor and privilege,” Parsons said.
Parsons is married to Chloie Parsons. They have a son, JT, 2. Parsons is the son of John and JoAnn Parsons and Sally Carpenter of Sweet Home. He is a 1993 graduate of Sweet Home High School.
Allyn is married to Annette Allyn. They have three children, Michael, 15; CJ, 14; and Kristina, 9. He is the son of Rose-Marie and Jim Allyn. He graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1989.