Guard aviation mission helps Key West recover from Hurricane Wilma

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Thomas Kielbasa
  • FL Air National Guard Public Affairs
KEY WEST, Fla. --  Flying high above the azure waters of the Florida Keys, National Guard aviators helped expedite Hurricane Wilma recovery Wednesday as they delivered pallets of water to hurricane victims in Key West. 

Four Army National Guard helicopters – including three UH-60 Black Hawks and one CH-47 Chinook – airlifted 12 pallets of bottled water from Homestead Air Reserve Base to the football field at Key West High School during a morning mission as part of the ongoing hurricane recovery operations. 

The high school had suffered only minor storm damage, and was serving as both an evacuee shelter and a distribution point where Florida Army National Guard Soldiers passed out the water to lines of waiting Key West residents. 

After the Black Hawks – flown by members of the Florida National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 171st Aviation Regiment – touched down at the football field and delivered their pallets of water, Guardsmen used forklifts to move the supplies to the adjacent distribution point. 

Staff Sgt. Deborah Miale of the 260th Military Intelligence Battalion explained that the people had been arriving all day in cars, on bicycles and even on foot. 

As she passed boxes of food, water and cleaning supplies to hurricane victims, a man wearing multicolored clothes and sporting a black top hat with feathers in the band rode up to her on a battered bicycle. Miale was about to meet the self-proclaimed, semi-famous, “Wizard of Key West.” 

The colorful bicyclist – Donald Cobert of Key West – chatted briefly with the Guardsmen while receiving four boxes of food. 

“This was probably the worst storm I’ve seen here,” Cobert, whose vibrant outfit matched his unique moniker. “I live on the second floor, and my building was shaking.” 

As the “Wizard” pedaled away, Miale commented that visits by fantastically dressed residents like Cobert weren’t unusual at the Key West distribution point. 

Sitting in a wheelchair outside the high school gymnasium and watching some of the recovery efforts, 66-year-old Marly Knowles described how the flooding from the hurricane took her by surprise: 

“It was so awful. I fell asleep, and when I got up off the bed I put my foot down and I couldn’t believe that halfway up to my knee was water. 

“At first it was such a shock I didn’t even know what it was,” Knowles, a widow who’s lived in Key West since 1959, explained. “Then I realized ‘Oh, my house is flooded!’” 

Knowles lost part of her roof from hurricane-force winds and said she had witnessed similar damage throughout the city. 

She said she expected the cleanup from Hurricane Wilma could take months, but due to the “easygoing nature” of Key West residents many people would take the damage “in stride.”