HOUSTON – It’s hard to believe Hurricane Harvey slammed into Houston eight years ago today.
The storm left homes and businesses destroyed, but it also brought out countless first responders who risked their lives to save families from the dangerous floodwaters.
At Ellington Air Force Base, KPRC 2’s Re’Chelle Turner sat down with Lieutenant Commander Matt Krueger, a U.S. Coast Guard pilot, who helped lead search-and-rescue operations during Harvey.
“Definitely still comes up every year. It’s like, wow, I can’t, like, you get the Facebook feeds and the pictures on your phone, and you’re like, oh, it’s that time of year again. You remember something that significant,” Lt. Cmdr. Krueger said.
Krueger was stationed in Alabama when Harvey hit. He quickly got the call to join the emergency response.
“I was on a C-130, and we landed here at Ellington, and then the next morning was when I was identified as like, hey, you’re going to fly with these people that you’ve never flown with before. You’re going to climb into this helicopter, and you guys are going to respond to a couple of cases. And sure enough, that’s exactly what it was like that first morning that I was here.”
Krueger’s team operated the MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, a critical aircraft used for rescues.
“Crew of four, two pilots, a winch operator who’s also the mechanic that does most of the work on the helicopter, and a rescue swimmer whose kind of tucked in the back. They’re EMT-qualified,” he explained.
QUESTION: What was it like when you got up in the air and you saw the disaster?
“It was something I’d never seen before. It was, you know, there’s flooded, washed out roads. There were full neighborhoods where, you know, you see the rooftops and then underneath is just water everywhere. I think our first case was up in northeast Houston,” Krueger recalled.
The continuous heavy downpours made rescue operations extremely dangerous.
“I had no idea where I was going during Harvey, but I know Hobby Tower, the airport, was closed, but the tower operators were still there, and they were still deconflicting all these other aircraft in the area. And they were like, all right, [do you] see that road in front of you? You continue to fly that road, because they had the area knowledge that I didn’t have, so the relationship with them was amazing.”
The mission quickly shifted from rescuing stranded residents to critical medical evacuations.
“I think in one case that we had, I had a stroke patient who had been isolated and was under the care of a small clinic in the Beaumont area. But that person, after two or three days, needed a much higher level of care that the Beaumont folks in that region weren’t able to provide. So we started getting specific medical evacuation calls where we would actually fly out and take people to either the downtown hospital or maybe down at UTMB Galveston.”
QUESTION: What does it mean to you that you were able to help so many people? I mean, you were able to get in this giant aircraft and hoist in certain spots, and they relied on you to get them to safety. So what does that mean to you?
“It means a lot. Like I said, there’s one job that I wanted to do in the Coast Guard, and that would be a search-and-rescue helicopter. And to be able to do that, be able to provide that service, was an honor for me.”
For Krueger, Hurricane Harvey is more than a memory. It’s a reminder of why he serves. His work alongside crews, air traffic controllers, and local agencies saved countless lives when Houston was at its lowest point.
Eight years later, the Coast Guard’s mission remains clear: to answer the call when disaster strikes.