After Berserker

Note: this was written immediately after Hurricane Katrina wrecked so many lives and destroyed so much main land. Its impact was stratospheric. In the time since then, some things are back to normal, some have faded away. Forests have disappeared in some places, along with the wild life and industry that were there. Demographics have changed, cities have changed, crime and punishment changed. In short, our world evaporated from the times before Katrina to something different after it. This story is meant to encompass the totality, not just New Orleans. For an idea about this title, search Frank Frazetta, Berserker, and Dark Kingdom.

Today, I flew back to work on my ship. The crew abandoned it three days ago to safe ourselves from Katrina. We set a course of 230 degrees at one knot in order to distance the vessel as much as we could from the storm, and also to move it away from all other vessels. We expected her to sink, as the winds coming at us exceeded 150 knots with seas at 60 feet and more.

We abandoned about 8:20 am on Sunday morning. The ocean was greatly disturbed, long swell coming every fifteen seconds. Winds were northeast at 35 knots, gusting to 45. Every hour or so, rain bands came through and dumped on us. The sun lost its white-golden glow and filtered through more gray-white, reflecting sea spray and clouds, long columns of watery atmosphere going heavenward, helter-skelter. When we crossed the barrier islands ringing Grand Isle, Fourchon, and Leeville, they were already mostly inundated, throwing up white sea wash and breakers. Those little communities were already taking heavy seas, as they battened down and prepared to evacuate. Roads out were pretty empty, until they got to Houma, where traffic became horrible, all moving west. Ten hours were required for the 120-mile trip to Lafayette. Today, as we came back out, there are no barrier islands. They’ve washed away. The little towns are so much flotsam and jetsam. They, too, are gone.

The morning that we abandoned, the sea was chameleon—at one moment blue, at another green, and at another gull-gray. Deep shadows lay between swells, and the ocean appeared to pulse, throbbing a long heart-beat, saying “I am coming: hear my messenger and flee.” The sky changed: where it was blue, it was the cleanest, most magnificently pure blue, but it favored gray with dapples and sprays of rainbows and silver, and over there came the freak, hidden behind a curtain of haze and distant rain and banded clouds.
Today, there was no horizon; only haze, clouds, and squalls. The sea was injured, looking like green dumplings. It was milky, ugly, bad complexioned. A river of oil, perhaps 75 feet wide, ran from west to east, complete with oxbows and pools, and it continued as far as I could see. A production platform was bent over akimbo, and it was leaking oil which meandered into the larger stream. We crossed a vessel of some sort whose derrick was gone, and whose body twisted into something entirely objectionable. A jackup rig belonging to Diamond washed ashore on Dauphin Island. Between eight and eleven oil rigs are derelict, floating around the gulf, or on the bottom. Our own rig was found listing over five degrees, dead in the water, 30,000 tons ready to smash something. Between Morgan City and Pensacola, there are no longer piers, docks, or depots to support the massive oil and gas industry in the Gulf. That infrastructure is gone. There is no fuel, nor water, nor food, nor barite, nor transportation. Those companies are gone, for now, their workers only so much human detritus and their plants only so much rubbish. Out here on our rig, the sea is blue-eyed and smooth, like a lovely lady, but just over there are islands of trash floating by—roofs, plastic, lumber, siding, logs, trees, trash…hundreds of square miles of what once was housing or forest. There are cats and dogs and horses and birds, probably people floating or going to the bottom in those islands of trash.
Flying from Patterson to Galliano, every mile became wetter or more submerged in that tortured land. Great cypress swamps were filled with stark, naked, and broken trees, many of which were broken, sharp sticks. Small islands broke the surface of black, turgid water. Houses sat abandoned, their walls disappearing down in water. Boards, roofing, and flotsam floated in islands, things that once were houses. Cars are windows deep. I looked down into the rooms of a school, its roof gone, each messy little room filled with water, where just last Friday, it was filled with kids. Rainbow sheens of oil flashed colors from floating pools. Trees lay over sideways, all lying in the same direction, telling us which way the wind blew when they were killed. Sugar cane lies on the ground, again all pointing the same direction. A piece of highway came up out of the murk, made a gentle arc for about a mile, then disappeared in the murk. Dikes and levies were underwater, except for the occasional tower or object. Oak trees seven feet in diameter lay parallel, their muddy boots all pointing north.

Sunday, when we flew in from the ship to Galliano, a farmer whose acreage joined to the heliport property, was busily cutting hay on a new green tractor. He was trying to beat the hurricane. Today, the rolled hay was lying in two feet of water—ruined-- and there were no signs of farm, house, barn, farmer, or tractor. There were dead cattle lying about, and some live ones. I wish they could tell their stories. The drainage ditches were filled with black water, and thousands of the trees along their banks lay toppled along the banks, all pointing the same direction. It was a sodden, howling, berserk north wind that tore through here and killed them.
We flew over the place where barrier islands were, but no more. A beaten down Port Fourchon was to the west with her destroyed roofs, houses in various states of destruction, exploded trailers, flattened signs and utilities, and boats beached or sunk. Directly below, Leeville was smashed, a junk yard. Off to the left, I could only discern one structure in Grand Isle, some kind of tank, something shiny. All this was near the eye of the Bitch, whose tears and breath have destroyed much of the Gulf Coast and inland states, as well. Thousands of square miles of eastern Louisiana, all of Mississippi, and most of Alabama have been reduced, and that is a military term, meaning “thoroughly whipped and unable to further defend.”

Throughout the area, banking has ceased. Credit and debit cards can not be used, nor checks, nor gas cards, nor traveler’s checks, nor ATM cards: this world is now cash only. Traveling has stopped, and no one can go to work, nor hospital, nor airport. There is no gasoline, but also, no road is cleared of trees and power lines. Phones are down and most cell towers are, so half the country is unaccounted for. Wives don’t know where husbands are, or if they live, and vice versa. Mail is undeliverable, medical services nigh impossible, there is no electricity, nor clean water. Drowned dogs and cats lie in wetted pools around their beaten little bodies. Birds? I have seen none, not even buzzards. There is no provision for living: no sanitation, no toilets, no staples. Lawlessness is rampant, with people being killed for a jug of water, or a pair of shoes. Hospitals are being ransacked for drugs, and looters are stealing entire inventories, especially in New Orleans. What the storm did not carry away, looters are. They should be shot on sight.

Swamp creatures—snakes, gators, coons, nutria, mosquitoes—slither or buzz into the rubble and feasts of what was recently towns. Zoos have lost their quaint fauna to drowning. Pastures are dotted with dead cows and horses. There are no schools and no school kids, and I wonder if these hundred thousand children will lose a school year. LSU medical school is closed. A million houses have been demolished. No roads are open. Millions of cars are ruined or damaged to flooding. No one yet knows how many humans have been killed, how many displaced, how many jobs lost, how many families hurt, how many churches destroyed, how many dreams shattered. The saddest things are those people being found drowned in their attics from rising water from which there was no escape….and their pets found drowned on top of the book cases or cabinets, the highest places they could climb.

We are in trouble here in the southeast, and we need help. If you are prayerful, we need your prayers. If you are benevolent, we need your gift. If you are wealthy, we need your coin. If you are strong, we need your shoulder. If you have means, we need your support. Even with help, we bid adieu to stately old homes, lush oak forests, many centers of profit and fun, and many people who once lived here. As a nation, nature has hurt us, and we have been injured and must minister to ourselves. It is enough to break my heart, and to make strong men weep.