"...LIKE A TUMOR ON THE BACK OF...KATRINA...."

From Tim Gautreaux, a writer and teacher from Hammond, Louisiana, in the Guardian:

Those who live in Louisiana all their lives develop an understanding of disaster. We know a hurricane can turn over hundreds of offshore oil rigs in one pass and then come to land and do the same to our homes. Refineries explode, rigs blow up, pipelines burst, well pressures cause accidents that take fingers, feet, arms, legs and life itself.
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So, even though I am not an oil worker, the industry is part of my environment, my history, and when I saw images of the April Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire, I thought at once, "Wait a minute. Something's wrong. That rig is state-of-the-art, the size of a small factory, loaded with technology that rivals the space programme in complexity. Why is the fire so enormous?" And later, when the labyrinth of pipes and valves keeled over in a rumbling, hissing nimbus of flame, I was astounded, thinking, "Why didn't the blowout preventer shut down the well?"
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The nightly news told of oil coming ashore. Unlike its neighbour states, Louisiana has no shore, no sand beach except for a small spit called Grand Isle, no dunes, hills, cliffs. The entire Gulf border and its wide attendant marshes are exactly at sea level. The shore is mostly gritty mud held in place by tall, dense marsh grass. What is not water is grass, thousands of square miles of it. When the oil kills the grass, the shore will begin to melt away. This coastal marsh is home to millions of birds – pelicans, terns, egrets, great herons – and a rich variety of mammals and reptiles. It is threaded through by countless miles of narrow bayous, inlets and lagoons, all spawning areas for shrimp and succulent blue-claw crabs, nesting grounds for vast flocks of migratory geese and ducks – a hot and humid greenhouse teeming with life.

Louisiana is a relatively small state, but it contains 40-45% of the nation's coastal wetlands. The neighbour states of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have similar fertile and productive marshes, though such areas are much smaller.
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I don't think people living outside the region understand what is happening. One so-called environmentalist suggested Gulf fishermen and oil workers should just get educated in green technology and work in solar panel factories. What are they supposed to do for 20 years until the technology is perfected and the factories built? Fishermen want to work as fishermen; the Gulf is 1,000 miles wide and they are independent members of a huge culture, not employees.
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After a charter boat captain shot himself in the head, I turned off the television. But everywhere I went, neighbours, bank tellers, waitresses, university professors all fretted about the spill. Last year, one billion pounds of fish was harvested from the Gulf; now only a tiny fraction of that is being caught in the small areas still open, and chances are even that clean catch will be distrusted by buyers outside the region. How many years will it take for Gulf seafood's reputation for quality to return?

This disaster rides like a tumour on the back of the monster Katrina, a storm that in 2005 killed more than 1,800 people in the New Orleans area. Many residents of the region were finally getting their homes rebuilt, their boats and docks restored.

Read the entire poignant essay. The best of the English newspapers have covered the human stories and reactions to the oil gusher catastrophe with sensitivity and understanding. A tip of the hat to them.

Tim has published collections of short stories and two novels. He teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana.