A day after Hurricane Katrina clipped New Orleans, breaching the levees and flooding the city, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Meyer of Honolulu was there flying a helicopter search-and-rescue mission when he spotted several survivors waving from a rooftop.

Meyer lowered a diver from his four-man crew into the floodwaters, then turned his HH-65 Dolphin helicopter toward the top floor of a two-story apartment complex that was surrounded by water about 12 feet deep.

Then, Meyer began seeing more and more survivors swarming out of the building to climb to the roof, he said.

"When we came over the top they started coming out," said Meyer, 39, a 14-year veteran who is stationed at U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point. "Our swimmer had to kick out a balcony to extract a woman."

That's when Meyer realized how dire the situation in the city really was.

It took Meyer and his crew almost two hours to fly the 18 survivors, two of them elderly, to a triage center at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans.

Now back in Honolulu, Meyer yesterday recalled his week in New Orleans, a week in which his crew hoisted almost 200 people from rooftops and away from the festering floodwaters.

Two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Meyer had been in Mobile, Ala., at a training session at the Coast Guard's pilot training center. When the hurricane hit, the training was canceled, and Meyer — who had been stationed in Mobile for four years before moving to Hawai'i two years ago — was asked to stay and help with the recovery.

On Aug. 30, a day later, Meyer's crew went to work in New Orleans.

Placed in a crew alongside a co-pilot who was stationed in New Orleans, Meyer flew more than 20 missions in a heavily inundated area between the Lakeshore Airport and an elevated section of Interstate 10 south of Lake Pontchartrain.

Using information relayed from emergency officials on the ground and in the air, Meyer's crew picked up lone survivors, groups and families. During one run, Meyer estimates he had about 10 survivors packed in. Some residents who refused to leave their homes were given bottled water and military Meals, Ready to Eat.

Whether they wanted to evacuate or not, all survivors were glad to see help arrive.

"We found 16 people in a shelter and 14 of them did not want to leave," Meyer said. "We took two and dropped a case of water and another case of MREs. But you do the math; that's not enough for more than five days. We went back to check on them on the last day (we were in the region) and they were gone."

Meyer said he could not put into words the devastation faced by survivors. He said his crew would operate in silence, methodically moving from rescue to rescue for as long as the fuel allowed.

"There was no talking in the crew at all. When you looked at it (the devastation), you think 'How does somebody get past this and move on?' People's lives were in those houses and they were just wiped out in an instant."

Meyer said his crew did not witness or suffer from any miscommunication and mismanagement that plagued the early stages of the relief effort. From the beginning his mission was clear, he said.

But not without danger.

For example, on the first night, his crew was ordered away from an area where a mob reportedly overran a New Orleans' Police Department SWAT unit, stealing their weapons.

The danger wasn't merely from the criminal element: With so many rescue helicopters and other aircraft aloft, Meyer said he had to constantly monitor radar to avoid colliding with others as he flew from mission to mission.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.