Cooler but still well above normal this week

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By MARY FOSTER and KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press


      AMELIA, La. (AP) - The oil-and-seafood hub of Morgan City has
been hit by one disaster after another, from hurricanes to the BP
oil spill. The latest trouble involves a deluge of water that was
diverted from the Mississippi River and is headed toward the town
of about 12,000 people.


      The Army Corps of Engineers, desperate to save Baton Rouge and
New Orleans from flooding, opened a spigot on a spillway over the
weekend, intentionally flooding this part of Cajun country, an area
much less populated. But the cascade of water from the Morganza
floodway is hampering the local oil industry and fishermen on the
bayou.


      Meanwhile, what is believed to be the first death related to the
flooding was reported in Vicksburg, Miss., on Thursday. Walter
Cook, 69, died from what authorities said was a brain injury
related to drowning.


      Warren County Coroner Doug Huskey said Cook died around 2:30
a.m. Thursday at River Region Medical Center in Vicksburg. He was
brought there after being pulled alive from floodwaters Wednesday.


      Also, the threat of flooding prompted at least one school
district in Louisiana to end the school year early. Students in
Assumption Parish schools will not have to attend classes next week
because the school board voted Wednesday to end the school year on
Friday.


      Back in Morgan City on Wednesday, Harry Ribardi, a shrimper, was
still waiting on the check BP promised to make up for his losses
last year. Now he's facing another man-made disaster.


      "This water is messing me up right now," Ribardi, 68, said in
a heavy Cajun-French accent. "Even if it don't flood me, it's
going to shove the shrimp way offshore where it's hard to get
them."


      The Morganza floodgates send Mississippi River water down a
20-mile spillway and into the Atchafalaya River. Homes spread along
the river south to Morgan City are vulnerable when the Atchafalaya
spills over into the complex of bayous and lakes common in the
basin.


      And while Morgan City has a 20-foot floodwall that is expected
to protect the town, workers have rushed sandbags into place and
shored up levees just in case. National Guardsmen have zipped up
and down the road along the bayou, troops loading four-ton sand
bags and lugging them into place. The river is expected to crest
here May 25.


      Trudy Dupuy, 62, has lived a block from the Atchafalaya River in
Berwick, just outside Morgan City, for 35 years. She believed the
area would be OK, in part, because the protective floodwall was
raised from 9 feet to its current height of 20 feet after the 1973
flood.


      "I'm not worried. This is home, I was born and raised here,"
she said.

      In 2008, Hurricane Gustav slammed the area, and before that,
Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. Last year, the oil spill closed Gulf
of Mexico fishing grounds, idling workers.


      The area swarmed with activity Tuesday - mostly work to get
ready for a flood.


      At ABA Fabrications, which builds equipment for the oilfields,
the payroll dropped from just under 600 workers before the spill to
140 now. Owner Russell Andras, 71, complained flood preparations
were taking time and labor away from his recovering business.


      "It was just starting to get a little better, but this flood
could make it really bad again," he said.


      The Morganza flood gates were completed in 1954, and last opened
in 1973. The unlocking of the gates was part of the drastic
measures taken by Army engineers during the flood. The corps opened
another floodgate north of New Orleans to send water into Lake
Ponchatrain, and it blew up a Missouri levee to save the town of
Cairo, Ill., sending water into 130,000 acres of farmland.

      Unlike the Missouri decision, residents near the Atchafalaya
basin live with the risk every year that the drain pipe could be
opened. Many accept the potential dangers posed.


      "They took pressure off the levees, and that was important,"
Ribardi said. "If the levee broke in Baton Rouge we'd still be in
trouble."


      Each year, near the beginning of high-water season, the corps
mails approximately 1,000 notices about the possible use of the
spillway to known property owners and others with interests in the
area, corps spokesman Ricky Boyette said. This year, a second
notice went out May 6, as the likelihood of the spillway's opening
increased.


      Ribardi, whose 68-foot shrimp boat "Sea Chariot," is docked
behind his modest, white-frame house, said spring is where the
money is for shrimpers. He expects more problems in the summer
months.

      "The fresh water, if it hits slowly, will chase the shrimp and
crabs out to sea," Ribardi said. "If it hits too fast, or if they
get trapped in someplace, it will kill them."


      Sterling Fryou harvests crawfish and crabs in the inland
wetlands. If the flood doesn't get his house, it could create a
bounty by dumping nutrients into the swampy estuaries home to the
shellfish.


      "In the end, we'll see bigger crawfish and crabs because of it.
After the `73 flood, we had three or four really good years," said
Fryou, 74.


      The lanky, energetic man with a hearty laugh and a Cajun accent
has been a fisherman for 60 years. Even before the flood threat,
nature had not been kind this year.


      "It was a bad year already because it was so dry," he said.
"There was no rain to get the crawfish moving and growing. Now the
current is so swift out there they are just holding on so they
don't get swept away."


      Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Alan Sayre in New
Orleans, Shelia Byrd in Tunica, Miss., and Holbrook Mohr in
Vicksburg, Miss., contributed to this report.
      

Gallery

Disasters

The oil-and-seafood hub of Morgan City has
been hit by one disaster after another, from hurricanes to the BP
oil spill. The latest trouble involves a deluge of water that was
diverted from the Mississippi River and is headed toward the town
of about 12,000 people.

Long-feared flood rolls toward La. bayou country

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