Former Coast Guard Commandant, Adm. Thad Allen (Ret.), made a visit to the pop-up food pantry at Leamy Hall at the Coast Guard Academy in New London Thursday in the wake of the partial government shutdown.
“It’s extraordinary how coast guardsmen have come together – men and women – service members, their families, their spouses, to cope with this problem,” Allen said.
He praised the extraordinary work of the Coast Guard and the community but said it’s not sustainable.
“Even as we speak today the Coast Guard Cutter Bollard is out on the Connecticut River breaking ice by East Haddam. And they’re up there doing their job making sure the Connecticut River is open for shipping. They’re not getting paid and their families are at risk. That’s unacceptable,” Allen said.
With the shutdown in day 27 and resources stretched thin, Allen said stresses will eventually build.
“At some point this is going to cause a problem with readiness to respond at mission. And what we don’t want to do is increase the risk to this country that we created artificially,” he said.
Allen was the principal federal official for response and recovery after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He was the U.S. Coast Guard’s 23rd Commandant and the national incident commander for united response during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Yesterday was the admiral’s 70th birthday and he posted on social media that the best present he received was the resilience of the men and women of the Coast Guard and their families dealing with the emergency.
He praised the community efforts, too.
“Extraordinary, extraordinary outpouring of support from the community. Just extraordinary,” Allen said.
The southeastern Connecticut community he knows well. Allen graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1971. He served as the commander of Group Long Island Sound in New Haven in the 1990s where the station in New London was under his command.
Even now, he’s the Tyler Chair at the Institute for Leadership at the Coast Guard Academy. That’s what brought him into town, but Allen said he would have made the trip anyway.
Allen grew up in a Coast Guard family and has seen hardships associated with duty.
“This is a hardship imposed on the Coast Guard with no any mission effect associated with it. We’re not trying to help anybody. It’s almost like we’ve become the victims here,” Allen said.
