Posted: “Guide for Hire in New Orleans”
[Bulletin Board]
Posted by Ted Haas on 2005-09-22 00:20:06
I’m sorry and I know that’s bad humor. Just got back a few days ago from there doing search and rescue by water for nearly 2 weeks and the situation there is grim to say the least. So I’m tired and worn out. I found myself towards the end of the trip looking in weird places to find a lil humor just to help coop with the overall devastation of the whole upper Gulf region. After all the pics I took of the “shock and awe” from Gulfport MS, to New Orleans, I found myself looking at the silly oxymorons I ran across.
For example, In Slidell, there was a house completely demolished with the “For Sale” sign still standing out front, as well as one in N.O., completely destroyed by flooding with the same “for Sale” sign still half under water. In Gulfport, there were rows of “No Littering” signs with trash and debris scattered all around, 3 feet deep as far as the eye could see. In New Orleans, I was hoping to find a “Fishing Charter for Hire” sign in one of the destroyed marinas with the mats of floating dead fish pushed in by the winds and waves, but I couldn’t find one.
I went there with a few other volunteers with boats, hoping to make a difference using our shallow draft aluminum boats and good boat handling skills. We hooked up with the right people and began our work. Navigating the streets of St Bernard Parish and New Orleans was as tough as any deep overgrown jungle river or shallow rocky bayou as I’ve ever been in. But it felt good finally breaking into the area, offering much needed boat assistance, guiding fire rescue and Army Nat’l Guardsman from house to house, looking for survivors. We were even dubbed our own team and went on a number of our own search and rescue missions.
On top of all that, if it wasn’t the chemical toxic brew in St Bernard Parish we had to operate in, it was the toxic bio soup in New Orleans we had to deal with. We blew one outboard from all the crap that was sucked up in the intake on one boat and we had to totally abandon another boat due to the buildup of crude oil on the outside that wouldn’t come off. The daily afternoon stop at the de-contamination stations was the closest thing to a shower as we could get. My black combat boots are permanently stain white from all the bleach baths we took. Anybody got any black shoe polish?? ~laughs~
Where am I driving with this? ~thinks~ Oh yeah, I feel really bad for the ecology of the Louisiana estuaries and bayous. The initial 12ft. tsunami on top of the 8 to 12ft. tidal surge wiped out coastal fisheries for almost 300 miles of coastlands. I was in areas in the bayous where I saw dead trout and redfish scattered as far as the eye could see. Dead wildlife of all sorts too were killed by the gazillions.
Offshore and coastline beaches will see the effects from over 2 million gallons of crude oil spilled and leaked out from the offshore drilling platforms. The surge and retreat and run off has started an artificial red tide bloom from all the fertilizers and organics from up to 6 miles inland, not to mention water run-offs from further up the state from the storm.
Inshore in Gulfport you have countless containers of rotting dead chicken and seafood floating along the shore to the point of being toxic to the aquatic life. In St Bernard Parish SE from N.O. you have Murphy Oil Refinery that spilled 750,000 gallons of crude oil that is making it’s way into the wetlands, creeks and waterways, which is the headwaters of the bayous. They also have chemical plants which are 50 to 100 yrs old that has buried toxic waste by-product in the ground, long before the EPA was formed. This was percolating to the surface due to the floods and of course running into the estuaries. All toll between Gulfport to St Bernard Parish, the total crude oil spillage is well over the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
Governor Blanco of Louisiana was asked about the repercussions of dumping all the toxic, biologically polluted wastewater of New Orleans into Lake Ponchatrain and was quoted as saying, “lets worry about one disaster at a time.” I happened to be right there were the levies broke with my boat, as well as the exhaust water pipes of the pumps, watching the green water going back into the lake. The split pea soup they were pumping in the lake was causing fish to die right before my eyes. The dead fish were washed up along the shore, covering every liner foot of shoreline as far as the eye could see. Of course, basic human life survival was top priority, and was rightfully so, but then again, you don’t want me to get started down that tangent either! Bottom line, Band-Aids don’t cure cancer! Sorry about that Dan, I’m AM trying to steer clear of politics. ~chuckles~
To wrap it up, I believe the redfish and trout fishery we’ve all read about and drooled over, watched on TV and fantasized about and actually experienced it, will take years to recover. And If I were you, I would totally ban eating anything from that area. Not just from the toxic hazards from it, but from the conservation prospectus.
I’m just one man’s observations from ground zero of Katrina.
Ted Haas
~Looks at CNN~ Ooops, here we go again!!! Rita now at Cat 5!!!
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