Flight

Back on land, in Houma, to meet with some colleagues tonight after some interesting days afloat. Simply being near the incident site, where so much massive equipment--the best the planet has to offer--is hardly able to cope with this disaster, is amazing. Improvising (intelligently, but still improvising) means to learn about the scale of the spill is fascinating and a challenge. And getting chased off the scene like flock of birds by a dog is different.

I learned, during my first unhappy stint in Louisiana, about the aftermath of a big hurricane. 20-foot tall piles of garbage, including siding to buildings, roofs, telephone poles, boats, trees and buses, lay scattered along the roadside throughout the southwestern part of the state. Telephone poles were wireless and leaning over, years after the storm's passage. Empty, half-wrecked buildings were common. The town of Cameron is still mostly swept away, with concrete pads marking where buildings and homes used to stand. The swamps smelled of decaying animals months after the previous storm.

This time, it's happening live. Tropical storm, soon to be hurricane, Alex is churning westward toward Mexico, having crossed the Yucatan in the last day. And even though the storm center is several hundred miles from here, the system covers the entire Gulf and the winds cleared out all but the largest ships from the incident site (and may well clear them out too, though it's starting to seem unlikely).

Start at the storm center, and head outward at about 1 o'clock. Continue about 1/8 inch past the Louisiana coastline, and that's roughly where I am right now, under those clouds.

We in the northeast simply don't comprehend the force and the scale and the terror of hurricanes. When they manage to touch our coasts, we lose some beaches, snicker at the richies who need to redo the first floors of their mansions, and otherwise suffer through a bad rainstorm with some broken branches. What we get in New England is a decrepit old man using a walker, compared to a wrestler in his prime they have to contend with down here in the Gulf. I'm starting to understand.