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Hurricane Katrina

Misery where Katrina tore ashore

As the world watches New Orleans, devastation lingers where the huge storm first touched.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published September 14, 2005

BURAS, La. - On a narrow swath of the Mississippi Delta, homes that stood for a century were leveled. Entire fishing villages, oil towns and farming communities were wiped out.

Life, land and livelihood were swept away by Hurricane Katrina's 30-foot storm surge.

"The level of destruction is total," said Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Jiff Hingle. "There is not a piece of property or building not affected."

The small towns of the delta, a milewide peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, have been under water since Katrina tore through more than two weeks ago.

As the world's attention focused on the chaos and devastation of New Orleans, the destruction along the isolated delta is only now becoming known. The flat, grassy landscape is dotted with modest homes populated by farmers, shrimpers, and petroleum workers who shop at the Family Dollar Stores in towns with no traffic lights.

In tiny Buras, where Katrina officially made landfall, homes that haven't crumbled are under 8 feet of water.

The town water tower crashed on the District Council office and garbage trucks were pushed into the surf.

Farther south in Triumph, a vacuum cleaner bobs in a washedout street like a channel marker.

In Empire, Nairn and Sunrise, the floodwaters have receded, but entire neighborhoods with hundreds of homes have vanished.

Across the delta, homes floated from their foundations, coming to rest hundreds of yards away. Citrus farms were ravaged by saltwater. Coffins rose from their graves.

"Why does the Lord let this happen to good people?" asked Clark Fontaine, 42, who moved into a new home in Nairn four days before Katrina hit. His first floor was washed out, leaving a hole 20 feet wide. "What have we done to deserve this?"

Breached levees

Like New Orleans, levees are supposed to protect Buras (pronounced BYU-ruhs) and other delta towns from flooding. But the levees here were breached in at least three places.

In Sunrise, storm surge blew out a concrete barrier 100 yards wide.

Closer to Port Sulphur, raging waters pushed out a section of a grass levee 25 yards across, and another concrete wall 40 yards wide.

The breaches have become the only clear path for airboats to Buras, Triumph and towns farther south. The military began touring those on Monday.

There is no evidence that levee repairs are under way. Fixing the breaks will take weeks, leaving towns like Buras awash in water. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is drawing up plans for a temporary fix to get the area through the rest of hurricane season, followed by a permanent repair.

Meanwhile, the levee walls that remain have become a refuge for the living and the dead.

Cattle roam on the narrow hill, the only dry land for miles. They graze on the grassy walls and stumble from spot to spot, seeking shade near the underbelly of an overturned oil truck.

"Out of 300 head of cattle, we don't have 35 left," said John Vogt III, a fourth-generation Port Sulphur farmer who has been ferrying hay to the cattle. "They've been drinking the water. They don't look good."

The levee is also filled with carcasses - catfish, raccoons, small birds, pelicans and snakes in knee-high weeds. Hundreds of light bulbs floated to the top of the levee, along with roofs, cars and furniture.

Three people have been found dead, including the parents of sheriff's Sgt. Michael Martin, Hingle said. Authorities believe as many as 98 percent of the parish's 28,000 residents evacuated before the storm, though recovery teams have not yet searched the hundreds of buildings that remain submerged.

Many Vietnamese farmhands could also be missing, residents say.

Fishing trawlers at the Buras Boat Harbor washed have onto the levee banks. So have pictures of a young girl kneeling at the edge of an inflatable pool. And a Bible, open to Deuteronomy, Chapter 28: If thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God ... Cursed shall be thy barn and cursed thy stores.

Big oil, big worries

Oil refineries speckle Highway 11, the only narrow road into the delta. Along with oysters and shrimp, oil is the delta's biggest business.

Crews with private helicopters deliver generators and portable lighting to repair the Conoco Phillips Alliance Refinery, where empty tanks were ripped open.

Along the levee wall near Sunrise, Shell crews work to patch an underwater oil pipeline ruptured during the storm. Men in bright-blue rubber suits hold yellow lines that reach the divers below, maneuvering in a small channel and opaque waters.

A breach in the levee ruptured the 20-inch line near Nairn and spilled about 250 barrels of oil. Crews from Shell and the U.S. Coast Guard are working to repair the damage and recover the spilled oil.

The water around the work site is contaminated with oil, rainbow slicks filling the surface. Muck fills the dirt where a flock of birds rests.

The oil spill is only part of the catastrophe now enveloping Plaquemines, said Kerry St. Pe, a Port Sulphur native and director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

Before Katrina, he said, the region lost so many acres of wetlands due to alterations to the Mississippi River that it was the "fastest disappearing land mass on earth."

Some of the remaining wetlands, which are the breeding grounds for shrimp and fish, are flooded by Katrina and probably gone forever.

At the Petrovich Marina in Empire, dead, dried crabs fill wooden crates and litter the floor of storage sheds. A decomposing armadillo is covered in oil. Oil truck tankers float in the marina channel.

The area's fishing fleet lay destroyed.

"It is heart-wrenching to see what has happened to the place we call home," Parish President Benny Rousselle said in a letter to residents, advising them they need tetanus and hepatitis shots before they return. "You will not recognize your community and at times will find yourself lost and confused."

Will home be there?

Residents are prohibited from entering the southern half of the delta, but dozens sneaked through road blocks and headed in by boat.

Buddy Hyatt wears a black sheriff's shirt and carries a handgun, deputized, he says, to fend off looters. He patrols neighborhoods in an airboat.

He powers toward his Gulf Drive home in Triumph on Monday, steering around metal roofs and over snapped utility polls.

"There's my roof," says Hyatt, 44, pointing to the left. He turns 45 degrees. "There's the side of my house."

His above-ground pool was squashed to the size of a kitchen table.

"Still got part of my carport left," Hyatt says, "pieces of it anyway."

He looks in a tool shed, sees nothing and powers on.

Up the road in Port Sulphur, the floodwaters at John Vogt's 250-acre family farm have receded, revealing the devastation more clearly.

His home, built in 1905, was twisted. The 150-foot Sprint cell tower on his property was mangled into a square.

His 4,000-tree citrus farm is destroyed. His gun collection, his seven tractors, his barn, his trucks, all lost.

Vogt, 55, isn't sure if the ground can be farmed again. He doesn't know if the state will let people rebuild.

"I know a man who found four bricks off his house and that was it," says Vogt. "He came in, picked up his four bricks, and turned around and left. We don't have any more livelihood. What are we going to do? Everything imaginable is gone."

Vogt sits on a cooler and bows his head, the kitchen chairs dangling from a ceiling fan.

--Times staff writer Craig Pittman contributed to this report.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 06:55:35]