and complemented his work on a bachelor’s degree in emergency and disaster management. After hearing about Coast Guard rescue swimmers doing similar work, he enlisted in 2013, but he decided on a different field after rupturing his Achilles tendon while training. He realized he’d found his calling in emergency response management as he finished his degree and, empowered by his active duty commands, used his education to plan post- hurricane recovery. He found that marine science technicians also had a big part in emergency responses, and he chose to attend MST A-school school in 2018. MSTs are responsible for a significant part of the Coast Guard’s planning for prevention (container, facilities, and cruise ship inspections) and response (pollution and natural disasters) operations. In addition, when the newly minted MST3 Saturnino arrived at Marine Safety Unit Texas City, he threw himself into getting multiple qualifications like pollution responder and federal on-scene coordinator representative (FOSCR). Being in Texas at a Gulf unit, he also got the opportunity to obtain litany of Incident Command System qualifications, including division group supervisor, liaison officer, situation unit leader, resource unit leader, and much of the work toward completion of both operations and planning section chief. All of these ICS qualifications are crucial to efficient operation of an interagency response. His Coast Guard mentors in the Gulf empowered him to seek greater responsibility and to trust his own decisions. To say that Saturnino had been training for this day for the last 10 years would be an understatement. As he considered the scarcity of answers, he watched the water level as it inched up the tires of a nearby Honda Civic. 22 RESERVIST � Issue 1 • 2022 He finally called the emergency manager for the city. “Basically, I said, ‘I’m an emergency manager from another state, I don’t know your AOR or your vulnerabilities, but I come from the Gulf, and I’ve been doing hurricane response for the last three years. These are my concerns,’” said Saturnino. The dispatcher hadn’t realized there were people still in the hotel, but said he’d relay the info. The water was now flowing so fast around the hotel that Saturnino knew it was too late to leave. Over the past hour he’d been on the phone, the water had risen nearly 14 inches. His family and more than 100 other people at the hotel were trapped. With his daughter sleeping soundly a few floors up, Saturnino reached out to the hotel manager to offer whatever help he could. The manager, overwhelmed with guest concerns, was grateful to have his assistance. Saturnino also reached out to the police dispatcher to let them know he was ready to help with whatever they needed. His experience told him that when floodwaters rise, it’s usually a few days until they recede, possibly up to a week. “The first 72 hours of a response are usually the best 72 hours,” said Saturnino. “Most people have enough to get through that time period, but after that, you start to run out of [supplies]. I was trying to figure out if we had enough to get us through at least that 72 hours.” He began to work on a logistics plan for the hotel, including monitoring the integrity of the building, plans for handling medical concerns of guests, an evacuation plan for the elderly and disabled, and a plan for rationing the hotel’s limited amount of food. Drawing on his hurricane response experience, he planned a strategy for handling logistics of multiple evacuation
