A Changed Landscape

WEST PEARL RIVER, La. Allen Smith twisted the throttle on the engine of his 14-foot aluminum boat and didn't like what he saw.

The pungent, fleshy corpses of rotting carp and river rats lined the shores, lodged behind nearly every piece of debris.

The water was eerily warm and milky brown.

Seawater had scorched once lush vegetation, turning it a sunny shade of yellow.

Silence filled skies that were once a soaring orchestra of chirping birds and migrating ducks. Fish no longer frolicked on the surface of the water.

"I hardly even recognize the area," Smith said on his first trip down the river since Hurricane Katrina roared through. "It's like an entirely different river."

Smith is a quiet and enormous character. He has to stuff himself in his Ford Ranger pickup, and his belly sometimes takes a second to settle when he sits down. He has a tattoo with his name -- "Allen" -- on his arm. Friends began to call him Chugs after he slammed a can of beer in 1.2 seconds.

Smith's love for the river comes out in stories of past adventures.

"I shot my first pig off that point," he said while trolling past downed trees. "I was 9."

Smith, 21, was taking two family friends to Rigolet's Island, a tiny bayou island 50 miles from New Orleans. Katrina's three-story storm surge had damaged the bridge to the island of mostly retirees and commercial fishermen. Boats were the only option for those wanting to see the devastation.

Eddie Chagnard Jr., a commercial fisherman, and his girlfriend, Naydeen Berrigan, knew the storm likely claimed their two homes, one where they lived and the other where he worked.

The tiny, stilted homes and 55-foot fishing boat were all he had, and all he ever wanted.

They barely evacuated for Katrina in time, with little more than her tiny, black terrier mix, Ebonee.

"We've had storms before," said Chagnard, 48. "But we've always been able to lick our wounds and move on. I'm not sure that will be the case this time."

Nearly a week after Katrina, Smith and his friends were numb to the wholesale devastation of buildings and homes.

They were ready to play out what has become the grim ritual in these parts: Expect the worst, find total destruction, break down into tearful despair and move on.

But they were not prepared for the savage reshuffling of a river they had known in different ways for each of their lives. The river became a gently flowing testament to Katrina's fury, which sent a 15-foot bubble of salty water over the bayou, changing the landscape forever.

"It's like someone died," Smith said while trolling along an area to avoid debris. "It looks like it has been hit by vandals."

Tiny fishing cottages that once dotted the shores were smashed, flooded or gone.

Floodwaters snatched a blue train car and deposited it five miles away on the shores of the river.

Debris was everywhere: toilet seats, clothes, garbage. A 45-foot shrimp boat was deposited in a remote backwater slough.

'This New River'

Arthur Averette weathered the storm mostly on his fishing boat, which was tied off in front of his small, grubby home on the river.

At first, he went back and forth between the home and the boat during the storm. Soon all he could do was stand on the roof of his home before that was submerged, too.

"I can rebuild the home," he said Sunday, as his daughter picked him up for his first shower in a week. "But what it did to this river just doesn't make no sense."

The natural changes were bad enough.

Trees, branches and vegetation clogged and rerouted stretches of the river that Smith used to race through, throttle open, hat backward, smile wide.

Now he must slowly navigate his green, flat-bottomed boat through a flooded swamp that now leads around the jammed stretch and back to the main river.

"This new river is changing every hour," Chagnard said while kneeling on the bow, using a paddle to gauge water depth and direct Smith around obstacles. "We shouldn't spend too much time on the island, no matter what we see. We might never get back."

It was impossible to ignore the stink of the rotting fish and swamp mud that had been soaked in raw sewage from nearby communities.

"It's more awful than I could have imagined," said Berrigan, 45.

The surging saltwater caused the pungent fish kill. The saltwater killed the freshwater fish in the river, and the freshwater killed the saltwater fish that came in with the storm.

"Now they are gator bait," Chagnard said. "It's going to be a long time before it's ever back to fishable, but it will never be back to normal."

Smith finally maneuvered the boat over to Rigolet's Island. He trolled into a small channel and pulled up to where Chagnard and Berrigan's homes used to stand 12 feet above the water.

"My God," a teary Berrigan said, clutching her panting dog. "Both homes are gone. There isn't even a trace."

The routine was playing out. Nothing left to sift through, nothing to recover.

They spent less than a half-hour surveying the land, sloshing through a boot-sucking muck of diesel fuel, sewage and swamp mud.

Mostly they were silent.

"It's like a nightmare," Berrigan said.

"My boat, my 55-foot boat is gone," Chagnard said. "My livelihood is gone."

A few more minutes passed.

It was time to move on.

Reaching For Hope

"It's times like these that a neighborhood can really come together," Chagnard said. "Who knows, maybe it will be good for this place."

Smith tried to find the same hope back on the Western Pearl River, as Chagnard and Berrigan barely spoke.

He started to move the boat with more speed and confidence up the river. A giddy grass snake crossed the river. A bass dimpled the surface of the water.

Signs of hope.

Then an osprey soared overhead. Another sign.

"Who knows, maybe this will be good for the river," he said, spitting a wad of tobacco over his right shoulder. "Maybe it was necessary cleaning out."

Then he saw more garbage and a refrigerator along the bank.

It was too early for hope.

"It's too darn much for me to think about," he said. "It's just a damn shame. That's all I can say."

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at 813-259-7668.