The Log | Special Feature
Almost Apocalyptic Scale of Devastation and Contamination in Katrina-Afflicted Areas Stuns Researchers There to Verify Environmental Damage
by Monte Basgall
Nicholas School Associate Research Professor Marie Lynn Miranda describes her December motor trip to areas afflicted by Hurricane Katrina in almost apocalyptic terms.
Driving instead of flying from North Carolina to the Gulf region—in order to lug their equipment to the widest swath of territory—she and three research associates started seeing extensive damage around Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., that continued all the way to New Orleans and beyond into Texas.
There to verify the data they have been collecting from local environmental investigators and uploading to a special central hurricane effects government Web site, they saw far more than they were prepared to see.
“We’d looked at all the satellite and aerial imagery data,” Miranda recalls during a post-trip interview. “We’d collected all the flood stage, and housing and demographic data. We’d read hundreds of articles that had come out over the Web or print media. We’d probably seen a thousand photos. But what was not captured in any of this is the incredibly huge geographic scale over which the hurricane-affected area extends. We just kept driving for hundred of miles and seeing more damage.
“Then when we went into those neighborhoods that had been flooded, it engaged all our senses. Some communities were full of houses but virtually silent, except maybe for a creak, creak, creak of a (powerless) attic fan blade. There were cats everywhere that had managed to make it by turning feral.
New Orleans, mold species
Tape Samples, December, 2005
1. Acremonium
2. Aspergillus
3. Aspergillus niger
4. Chaetomium
5. Cladosporium
6. Curvularia
7. Gliocladium
8. Graphium
9. Mycelia sterilia
10. Penicillium
11. Scopulariopsis
12. Stachybotrys
13. Trichoderma
14. yeasts
“We could sort of smell the deteriorating waste. When we walked into houses we could smell the mold and the mildew. We could feel the dampness and sense it on our skin. There was a heaviness to the inside air that was really striking. As much as we thought we knew what the situation was going to be like, I think the four of us felt completely overwhelmed by it.”
A principal investigator at Duke’s Superfund Basic Research Center, Miranda previously developed a series of Geographic Information System (GIS) projects. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall she began working with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park to expand that work into a special Hurricane Response Portal.
In doing that she was able to mobilize the GIS analysts that staff her Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI). CEHI is a research, education, and outreach program committed to fostering environments where all children can prosper. Given the enormous justice components inherent in the impacts of Katrina, CEHI staff were especially well-positioned to take on the work.
“Our purpose in going down to the Gulf was to ground truth some of the environmental data we have been collecting for the Web site,” she said, noting that her group visited about 25 houses. “We also wanted to get a better sense of what the key environmental health issues were down there. In addition to visiting houses we talked to people from Tulane and Louisiana State universities and the government agencies and the emergency operations center. We were kind of round-robining information to get a better sense of what the key problems were.”
Photos: Marie Lynn Miranda and research associate Matthew Stiegel examine data from field trip to the Gulf Coast; Indications of the bulk of non-salvageable debris from inside homes; Mold contaminates home in New Orleans; Trees bend under hurricane-force winds