[thunder crashing]
If anybody's gonna be able to work with us,
they have to be faster than the standard.
This is not something you take on for fun.
People are screaming for help.
The Cajun Navy, a flotilla
of volunteers from Louisiana.
Just regular guys who say they don't wait for help,
they are the help.
[thunder cracking]
The concept of civilian-led rescue
is a paradigm shift for how rescues
are gonna be conducted from this point forward.
[thunder booming]
[distant boat engine whirring]
[fast vehicles driving]
Hey, Trey.
I'm rolling on Basin Bridge right now,
about to make that exit.
The Cajun Navy is like a loose conglomerate
of people who came together
when their neighbors needed help.
Hurricane Katrina is essentially
where the Cajun Navy started.
Right now, we're headed to the Atchafalaya Basin
for tomorrow's search and rescue games.
One of the things that gets misconstrued the most
is that everybody out there doing Cajun Navy stuff
are just a bunch of cowboys from Cajun country,
don't know what they're doing.
They don't realize that we're training ourselves
to be first responders to a FEMA standard at least.
Which is the internationally accepted standard.
[somber violin music]
I'm Leo.
Papa Leo is my nickname,
I'm one of the older ones in the group.
And now that I'm retired,
this is my way of giving back, you know?
Alright, talk to you later.
This is training, this is familiarization
for the upcoming hurricane season.
The bad news is we're hearing 2018 may be a bad year.
The idea for SAR games was kind of organic.
Like we needed to find a way to go practice.
So we set up a mock rescue scenario.
With 600 rescues that need to be conducted,
we indicated this by taking little flags
and we just tied 'em off to a tree
that's within arm's reach.
PAPA LEO: Wow, this guy did a good job
of hiding right here.
What we're relying on is a lot of tech.
So when the boaters arrive,
what they have to do is get onto Zello and Glympse,
that's how we're gonna talk to them
and visually track them, real-time.
Dispatchers, they're gonna get all the rescues
that need to happen
and dispatch from the Zello app that we use.
The other thing that we're focusing on is Glympse
so we can see them and they can see us.
So we can do real-time tracking.
We're exposing everybody to that whole concept
and getting people trained and ready
for when something happens again.
[twangy banjo music]
This is our inaugural event,
we've never done one of these before.
And there's a lot of eyes on us.
It's all about being there for our neighbors,
whether it be here in Louisiana or in Texas
or wherever it is, we're there when they need us.
Each plot of flags...
Okay, each flag represents a person in that house.
Four flags per boat, per run.
Like don't fit more people in your boat.
There's a big difference between people and flags
but this is still excellent training
for how to recover people from that location.
Ladies and gentlemen at the siren
we're gonna start the Cajun Navy Summer Games.
Three!
Two!
One!
[sirens blaring]
It's alright, good luck, y'all!
What is this all about?
Civilians can make a difference, they can do something
and accomplish amazing things when they work together.
A flag!
It's a flag, oh my God, oh my God!
So you have two F-14 flags, correct?
Woo!
We're making it up as we go.
This hasn't been done before.
We're striking out in our own way
to find the right way to go about this.
People find strengths they never knew they had.
Go on straight ahead, Gord.
Why does it exist?
Because you don't sit around and wait
for somebody to come take care of a problem
that you have in your front yard.
The government's gonna do what they do,
but we can still do what we do
and make a huge difference.
The heart of it is that you
have to rely on your neighbor.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
Two golden eggs in this match.
How do you make a mark on this world,
to contribute to society as a whole?
To know that I'm a part of something
that's gonna be a shining example of what Cajun is,
that's a driving factor.
To see a legacy established by a group of nobodies.
Team number 10, team 10.
You are the winner of the grand prize.
Thank you all again very much for participating.
We all made a lot of progress today.
And we all had a good time.
Thank you all very much, good job.
Alright, take care.
Bring it in.
[audience applauding]
The need is there.
We're not trying to be superhuman.
We're just ordinary people.
There's people's lives whose lives we can greatly impact
and whose lives we can save.
That makes a difference.
[serene music]