Showing posts with label mass evacuation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mass evacuation. Show all posts

Jun 18, 2010

The last of Leeville: Chances grow slim for a wide spot in the road in La.

A beach after an oil spill.Image via Wikipedia

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 18, 2010; C01

LEEVILLE, LA. -- Their eyes are bloodshot. Their scraggy skin glows reddish-brown. They clutch cans of beer. On the wooden deck of Griffin's Marina and Ice, they recoil when approached, like a nest of vipers.

"We used to be fishermen," one sneers, drunk, seething with wounded pride. "But now we work for BP."

They won't say more than that. From their perch, they glare across the silent street at the gorgeous marshland now closed to fishing. At dusk they screech away in pickup trucks, barely pausing at the town's one blinking traffic light. They surrender Leeville to shadow, to the mosquitoes, to what used to be and now isn't, to a solemn reality captured in two words that embody the collapse of a way of life.

Ghost town.

This summer may mark the end of Leeville, a town birthed by a hurricane, then destroyed by one, resurrected by oil and now destroyed by oil. It isn't the only dying town outside the levee systems in south Louisiana. Subsidence, the sinking of delta land, has long been the existential enemy down here. Now wild crude has delivered what may be the final blow, choking off commerce. Some residents foresee an abandoned landscape, something right out of a Wild West movie, with empty slips instead of silent saloons, belly-up redfish instead of skittering tumbleweeds.

* * *

At the blinking traffic light, most drivers turn right and glide over the bayou to Port Fourchon, which services 90 percent of deep-water drilling structures in the Gulf of Mexico. Then it's on to Grand Isle, a paradise for sunbathers and beachfront property owners.

Confused drivers proceed through the light, past the sign that says "NO OUTLET," past two gas stations, four RV parks, a half-dozen bait-and-tackle shops, two motels and one bar, then run smack into a "ROAD CLOSED" sign just before pavement halts at the marsh.

That was Leeville. About a mile long, hugged by bayou, full-time home to a handful of people. No more than 60. Maybe not even 30. No one knows. Right now there should be hundreds of visiting fishermen leasing their own heavenly corner of the town's bayou front, but with waters closed by the Deepwater Horizon leak, there's no reason to come, no reason to stay.

For decades, storm surges have swallowed 14 square miles every year in the basins of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Last year the state redirected Highway 1 around Leeville to elevate the hurricane evacuation route. The town's only thoroughfare became a dead end. Now residents worry that a hurricane will drench the area with oil this summer, killing the root structure that keeps the very earth together.

Leeville will be gone.

"To me, Leeville was gone 20 years ago," says Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who says the town was 90 percent marsh in the '60s and is now 90 percent underwater. "When we did not take the action to protect the marshes around Leeville, that was the beginning of the end. The communities in southern Louisiana remain here despite floodwaters because this place produces tremendous amounts of biomass. A 7-year-old can go fish in back and catch enough food to feed his family."

Not now.

* * *

Hardly anyone's home. Maybe a half-dozen of 200 RV and camper spots remain occupied. Rusted carnage from Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav litters the roadside. Trailers are tacked with cheeky decals saying things like: "If You Don't Fish Then Why Am I Talking to You?"

The heat comes from every direction, even the ground. It's quiet.

Bobby Bryan sits in his motorized wheelchair in his home at the southern tip of town. Lace curtains checker the late-afternoon sunlight. There is nothing to do. Bryan can't operate his fishing guide business. There are no tenants in his 26-slot RV park. He has time to think.

Every Saturday 70 years ago, Bryan's mother would bake biscuits, load her 10 children into the family wagon upstate, get to the bayou and catch fish for lunch. They'd spend the day on the water. The water was life.

Fifty-seven years ago, when Bobby married his wife, Juanita, their marriage vows were: (1) He would always make sure she could go to church; and (2) She'd always leave him alone while he was fishing.

They moved to Leeville in 1990 to open the RV park and Marsh Masters Guide Service. Their son and grandson followed. The Bryans are still paying off the land. Katrina flooded their home, Rita ripped the roof off. A second mortgage was in order. BP cut them a check for June. They're grateful, even though it's not enough to cover insurance, lost revenue, repairs and what they assume is the plummeting value of their property.

"We're too old to start over," Juanita says, sitting under a portrait of a smiling Jesus holding a fishing net.

"I'd compare it to prison," says Bobby, 76.

"All you can do is put your faith in God," Juanita says.

God, right now, is an oil company.

BP "said they're gonna make me whole," Bobby says. "I'm waiting to see what that means."

Their 24-year-old grandson, Matthew, pulls into the RV park around 6 p.m. in a pickup truck.

"I'm more of a realist," says Matthew, who works construction on a new Highway 1 bridge while his father, an out-of-work guide for Marsh Masters, does contract cleanup for BP. "I see this as the beginning of another depression if the rigs and waters don't reopen. We'll lose everything that goes with it: the money, the culture, the traditions that weren't even mine yet."

* * *

In 1893 a hurricane blew its French-speaking survivors 12 miles inland from the coastal settlement of Cheniere Caminada, near modern-day Grand Isle. They bought tracts for $12.50 each and founded Leeville. They farmed, fished, trapped. Oranges hung heavy in verdant groves surrounded by rice fields. The land was three to four feet higher back then. In 1915 a hurricane pulverized all but one of the 100 houses in town. The Cajun families continued their generational march inland, leaving Leeville to languish until 1930, when a forest of derricks sprouted to pump newly discovered oil. When the shallow fields dried up, the fertile bayous continued to support fishermen, oystermen and shrimpers.

For 20 years Leeville has been a bustling outpost for the oil and fishing industries. Ice whooshed from freezers to coolers on sloops and tugboats. Sausage sizzled on the griddles of mom-and-pop eateries. Vacationing retirees gathered for 4 p.m. coffee every day in the Bryans' RV park.

Then the super-hurricanes came. Then the highway was rerouted. Then the waters were closed.

Griffin's Marina and Ice has lost 90 percent of its customers and laid off five employees. The Griffin family, who set up shop in 1977, filed claims with BP but haven't seen any money yet. At Leeville Seafood Restaurant, only three tables are occupied at dinnertime, when normally 75 fishermen would be scarfing stuffed soft-shells with special "Leeville crab sauce."

Owners Sue and Harris Cheramie, whose fathers were both shrimpers, sip Diet Coke. The oil slick is sinking them, they say, but the rigs need to operate. Drilling is a gamble, but it's a gamble that needs to be made again and again.

"This country cannot run without oil," Harris says. "We need it for plastic, fiberglass, that shirt you're wearing, that chair you're sitting on. We'll need oil for the rest of our lives, in some way."

The renters at Leeville RV Park have skipped town, itching to break their year-long leases. Terry Serigny, whose family helped found Leeville and who was raised here on houseboats, turned off the freezers at his bait shop when he closed last month. He hopes to receive a second $5,000 payment from BP soon.

"This is tearing us up," says Serigny, 57. "When everybody looks at each other, you can see it in people's eyes. We've fought recessions, and storm after storm. We can't fight this. . . . I don't have no other place to live. I only went to the sixth grade. It would be hard for me to wear a tie and have a briefcase and look for a job."

Leeville is still a slice of paradise, says Lynn LeBlanc Gros, who co-owns Bobby Lynn's Marina. In the mornings she goes to her dock, sees white egrets flying, hears porpoises surfacing for breath. She daydreams about every Cajun picking up a shovel to build another levee to stop the oil from reaching these marshes.

* * *

At night, the only sound is the buzz of air-conditioning. The last fisherman has fled the deck at Griffin's. It's dark by the water, except for the blue glow of an iPhone aboard the St. Vincent, a docked shrimping boat. Vu Vo, a 24-year-old deckhand, is waiting for his cousins to call about working for BP. He goes into the cabin, where a Jet Li movie dubbed in Vietnamese is paused on a TV, and wonders what he'll do if he can't get a cleanup gig.

"This is like all I know," Vo says of shrimping.

At the outdoor washeteria up the street, security contractors shove quarters into the laundry machines. They're working 14-hour days and staying at the motels across the street. By 10 p.m. some of them wind up at the only bar in town, Pappy's Place, where they throw back shots of Southern Comfort. The jukebox shuffles between Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. A strand of colored Christmas lights dangles over liquor bottles. The owner, Harris Ebanks, immigrated from Honduras in 1974, wound up in Leeville by accident and decided to stay.

He looks at the rowdy young security personnel around the pool table, then at the three regulars sitting at the bar. They're pissed off, drinking Bud Light, narrowing their eyes at the out-of-towners. They say Leeville's dead, that people are starting to starve, that lawlessness is coming, that despondency has already arrived. Townspeople cut the grass over and over to pass time. The natural order is upset. Fishermen aren't meant to be mopping up oil in white hazmat suits.

"That's not these guys," says Wayne Thomas, a welder from Baton Rouge who retired to Leeville with his camper. "These boys are a dying breed. I'm sad to see our culture -- the culture of living off the land -- is gonna die because of a screw-up that could've been fixed before it happened."

The town should be teeming right now, says Geraldine Busey, who works at Tyd's tackle shop up the street. Instead it's a ghost town. Everyone who's left is slowly going crazy.

She feeds $5 bills into a poker video game by the bar, punching DEAL, DRAW and HOLD. Her investment evaporates slowly. GAME OVER flashes on the screen again and again. She puts more bills in.

The only thing you can do, says her husband, William, is hope and wait, here on a bar stool. Hope and wait.

After a couple more rounds of beer, Geraldine screams. "Ah! I got the four deuces!"

The screen flashes WINNER, WINNER. Her pot rockets to $141.25.

Cash out, Geraldine, the men say. Cash out.

"I'm gonna keep playing," she says.

She slips another five into the machine. DEAL. DRAW. HOLD.

GAME OVER.

DEAL. DRAW. HOLD.

GAME OVER.

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Jan 19, 2010

Haiti earthquake relief is stifled by chaos in Port-au-Prince

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI - JANUARY 17: (EDITOR'S ...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Mary Beth Sheridan and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Security has emerged as one of the most formidable challenges in this earthquake-shattered capital, officials said Monday, limiting the ability of the United Nations and relief officials from elsewhere to distribute the food and medicine beginning to pile up at the airport.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday unanimously endorsed a proposal from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to send 3,500 more peacekeepers to Haiti to assist in the humanitarian relief effort, but it was not clear how soon they would arrive. Pentagon officials, meanwhile, said they had about 1,700 troops in Haiti, the vanguard of an estimated 5,000 American soldiers and Marines expected to be in the country by midweek.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - JANUARY 13:  In this s...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Security is the key now in order for us to be able to put our feet on the ground," said Vincenzo Pugliese, a U.N. spokesman. He said a lack of security had limited peacekeepers' access "to the operational theater" -- the city beyond the U.N. compound's walls.

The acknowledgement came as the streets here filled with people scrambling to survive six days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, estimated that 200,000 people were killed in the earthquake, far more than the 50,000 estimated over the weekend. The new figure is based on information from the Haitian government, but officials cautioned that it was still only an estimate.

Although a few trucks could be spotted in the capital delivering water, residents said they were becoming increasingly hungry.

Many of those in need of food and medicine are children. A representative for UNICEF, which is racing to open a facility to hold children who have lost their families, said thousands of young Haitians could have been separated from their parents in the disaster.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - JANUARY 13: People lin...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Late Monday, the Obama administration said it would temporarily allow orphaned Haitian children who are eligible for adoption by U.S. citizens into the United States to receive care. "We are committed to doing everything we can to help reunite families in Haiti during this very difficult time," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

Exodus from the capital

In Port-au-Prince, scores of desperate residents clambered onto packed buses to flee the chaos. Across the city, buses left for the countryside full and returned to the capital empty. Prices for tickets doubled as the buses jostled in long lines at gas stations.

Station owners refused to open because there was no security to hold back crowds -- and to keep away gunmen who could swoop in and steal a day's sales.

Soldiers of C Company, 2nd Battalion 22nd Infa...Image via Wikipedia

In the cities of Les Cayes, Jeremie and Cap Haitien, buses were hired by civic organizations, banks and other businesses and sent to the capital to collect anyone who wanted to leave. But the need for transport far outstripped supply.

"The numbers are growing every day for people who want to leave," said Michel Pierre Andre, a bus driver who makes the run to Jeremie. His bus was crammed to the roof with passengers, but the driver had no gas. Drivers and passengers were screaming at the gas station manager to start pumping some fuel, but he refused.

"Nobody wants to come to Port-au-Prince. There is nothing here. No food to buy. No work. No nothing," Pierre Andre said.

MINUSTAH Peacekeepers Help Street Merchant in ...Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

In the city's center, at the sprawling tent cities by the destroyed National Palace, residents said they had not seen a single international aid group distribute food in five days.

"I have been here every day. I heard they gave away some food but there was a riot," said Jean Marie Magarette, who was camping with her mother, sister and four children. "If you tell me they have been giving out food, I will believe you, but we have been on this spot since the day of the earthquake, and we have not seen anyone give away anything but water."

Trying to speed up the effort, President René Préval met with his Dominican counterpart and agreed to create a humanitarian corridor stretching from an airport and ship harbor in the western Dominican Republic into neighboring Haiti.

But relief remained agonizingly slow to get here. Across the capital, painted signs calling for help multiplied: "We need help," said one. "We need food, water, medical," said another.

Caring for the orphans

Officials were only beginning to cope with the challenge of caring for children separated from their parents, who in many cases died in the quake.

Nearly half of Haiti's population is younger than 18 years old. Even in better times, many of this country's youth are in desperate need of aid. In Haiti, where malnutrition is not uncommon, one in four children is reported to have a low birthweight, according to UNICEF.

A spokeswoman for the agency, Tamar Hahn, said UNICEF was seeking to set up a facility for children separated from their parents. Already, clinics around Port-au-Prince are starting to grapple with what to do with children they have treated who arrived unaccompanied by a parent.

As Hahn approached a field hospital near the airport Monday, she was met by Karen Schneider, a pediatric emergency doctor from Johns Hopkins University.

"Did you find us parents for our kids?" Schneider demanded.

Five unaccompanied children had been brought by rescuers to the clinic, run by the University of Miami-based charity Project Medishare. One, an 8-year-old boy named Jonas, curled up in a ball on the ground and cried for his parents for two days, Schneider said.

"We realized he must have seen the bodies," she said.

On another cot was a 2-year-old girl in a diaper, covered with bloody scratches.

"Orphan Baby Girl," read the sign at the end of the cot.

No one knew who had brought in the little girl, who had the bowed arms and legs of a person with cerebral palsy. She whimpered softly.

"We can tell she's never walked. She's completely helpless," Hahn said.

On another cot lay a 9-year-old, Sandi St. Cyr, who said she was on the school bus coming home when the quake occurred. Her bus tipped over, and a man brought her to the hospital for treatment of a sprain in her leg, she said.

"I don't know if my mom is alive," she said. "I haven't seen her."

Staff writers Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Michael E. Ruane and Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.

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Aug 9, 2009

Typhoon Batters South-east China

Typhoon Morakot has struck China's south-east coast, destroying hundreds of houses and flooding farmland.

Almost one million people were evacuated ahead of the storm, which crashed ashore in Fujian province with winds of up to 119km/h (74mph).

Flights were cancelled and fishing boats recalled to shore. A small boy died when a building collapsed.

Morakot has already hit Taiwan, killing at least three people and causing some of the worst flooding for 50 years.

In one incident, an entire hotel - empty at the time - was swept away by the waters.

'Treetops visible'

Chinese state media said that the sky turned completely dark in Beibi, Fujian, when Typhoon Morakot made landfall at 1620 local time (0820 GMT).

Trees were uprooted as high winds and heavy rain lashed the coast.

Some 473,000 residents of Zhejiang province were evacuated before the typhoon struck, as well as 480,000 from Fujian, Xinhua news agency said.

In Zhejiang's Wenzhou City a four year-old child was killed when a house collapsed. Dozens of roads were said to be flooded and the city's airport was closed.

Rescuers used dinghies to reach worst-hit areas; in one area only the tops of trees were said to be showing above the floodwater.

The storm is expected to move north and weaken, but strong winds are expected to persist for three days, forecasters say.

Taiwan devastation

Morakot dumped 250cm of rain on Taiwan as it crossed the island on Saturday, washing away bridges and roads.

At least three people were known to have died - a woman whose car went into a ditch and two men who drowned.

Thirty-one others were reported missing, Taiwan's Disaster Relief Centre said. Among them were a group reportedly washed away from a make-shift shelter in Kaohsiung in the south.

At least 10,000 people were trapped in three coastal towns, a local official in the southern county of Pingtung said.

In Chihpen, one of Taiwan's most famous hot spring resorts, a hotel collapsed after flood waters undermined its foundations.

Morakot - which means emerald in Thai - has also contributed to heavy rains in the Philippines. At least 10 people were killed in flooding and landslides in the north.

Typhoons are frequent in the region between July and September.