09:56 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Mike Hoss / WWL-TV News Reporter

Ten months after Hurricane Katrina, three New Orleans firefighters who first witnessed and videotaped the breach at the 17th Street Canal came forward with their story after a Congressional investigation told them to stay silent.

National Geographic Channel

Firefighter Captain Paul Hellmers videotaped the breach at the 17th Street Canal the day after Katrina landed while he was holed up in a nearby hotel with other firemen.

At daybreak, Katrina was roaring and visibility was next to nothing. Nine firefighters were riding the storm out inside the Lake Marina Tower couldn't see much but heard plenty.

“The wind coming through back here...was like a freight train coming through there," said Captain Godron Case. "Howling; the noise it was making."

Shortly after 9 a.m., Captain Paul Hellmers, an 18-year veteran of the NOFD, said he saw something he wasn’t expecting: water rising in the back parking lot.

“I would say about 10 minutes after we saw it rising, I was pretty certain that the levee had to be breached cause it was rising at such a rate,” Hellmers said.

Hellmers grabbed his video camera and went up to a top floor stairwell. While the building swayed, he searched but couldn't see the breach until visibility cleared enough for him to zoom in a half a mile away. That’s when he found the water pouring in.

“When I saw that, I'm sure my coworkers had the same reaction.. My heart just dropped, even though I knew the levees were breached before that,” Hellmers said. “Seeing it, and just knowing the fate of the city was sealed.”

Captain Joe Fincher described the sight as “surreal.”

“You took it in and you wondered how high the water was going to be in the city,” he said. “My first instinct when we saw the levee break was this is bigger than 9-11. I thought the fatalities would be in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands, you know; it was heavy.”

“Heavy,” Fincher said, because it was their neighborhood; their homes. Just a couple of days before Katrina, he videotaped his Lakeview house for insurance purposes. But now it was filling up with 10 feet of water.

The floodwaters also destroyed the Lakeview home of Captain Case. He didn't see it happen, but he had firefighters on his crew watch from above as the water swallowed their homes.

“I guess it would have to be torture to know that you can see the water rising on your house and not being able to do anything about it,” Case said.

But as the water kept rising, the firefighters knew what their role would be: rescuers.

“Soon as we saw the water come into the parking lot I'm thinking, ‘people are going to be dying soon.’ That was my first thought,” Hellmers said.

By early afternoon when the winds calmed enough, the firemen swam out to find a boat, which still sits along in the condo parking lot wall to this day.

Capt. Case hotwired it and they made the first of many life saving trips into the neighborhood near the breach.

“He was standing on his bathtub with water up to his chin when we got over there, and me and firefighter Pat Ball broke the window out and was able to rescue him,” Case said. “He wasn't saying much. He could barely stand when we got him in I don't think he would have made it much longer; the water was still rising at that point and I think he would have surely drowned in the next few minutes.”

The rescues continued for four days; from sun up until it just too dark.

“Far too many people needed help”

First responders simply did their job. They do not consider themselves heroes. And nearly 10 months after the storm, they don't think about the people they saved; it’s the people they couldn't get to.

“I try not to think about it too much; too many people suffering…far too many people needed help,” Hellmers said, pointing out thousands of homes they simply couldn’t get to.

The firefighters said there’s a reason you haven't heard their story so many months after the storm.

The video they shot of the levee breach was used in the recently completed Congressional investigation. And while they testified, they were told to stay quiet about what they saw until it was over.

They said what they saw wasn't what was being reported in those first few months. These firefighters knew the levees didn't overtop, which was initially thought; and they knew the 9:45 a.m. timeframe of the levee breach was also off.

“It certainly broke by 9 o’clock in the morning,” Hellmers said.

Captains Case, Fincher and Hellmers have been in the department for a combined 56 years, but it’ll be those first five days after Katrina they’ll never forget.

“The whole thing I took in kind of like a snapshot in my mind. Remember this, ‘cause this is something you'll remember for the rest of your life,” Hellmers said.

The National Geographic Channel will air a special, “The Drowning of New Orleans,” Wednesday night at 8 p.m. The story of the New Orleans Firefighters will be included in the story.