Gruesome Discovery in the Gulf

I hesitated in posting this because it is almost too much to bear. But one thing that few people are talking about is the amount of hazardous debris and waste in the Gulf, as a result of Hurricane Katrina's wrath. There is a lot of stuff out there, and it's ending up far from the coast. This disturbing report was received by ROFFS Environmental last week:

I was at a meeting this evening and it was reported that a charter boat encountered massive debris 16 NM South of Navvare (half way to Pensacola from Destin). Included in the debris field were three human corpses, multiple cows and horses, washing machines, refrigerators, etc. I have not been able to get out since I hit a piece of floating debris and blew a transmission.

ROFFS Environmental tracks and forecasts the distribution and motion of water masses that may contain hazardous and industrial wastes. They have a page dedicated to tracking the movement of the water from the Mississippi river after Hurricane Katrina.

While we're on the disturbing tip, check out this article written by National Geographic in October 2004, portending the arrival of a calamitous hurricane:

"As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however -- the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party. The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level -- more than eight feet below in places -- so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it. Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. When did this calamity happen? It hasn't -- yet."

Their death count was too high (it would appear, thankfully) but everything else was fairly accurate. Whatever you say about Katrina, don't say we weren't fairly warned.