Houses flooded with water to the attics. Oil refineries flooded, pushing oil into evacuated neighborhoods. On top of that, alligators and snakes are running rampant.
Your job ? come up with a strategy to fix these problems.
It sounds hard, but it’s just an average day at work for Oxford residents Mike and Adam Popa who spent six weeks down in the hurricane-torn Louisiana.
‘I like the excitement,? Mike said. ‘You’re never doing the same thing day to day.?
This father and son team work for the Detroit-based Marine Pollution Control and were assigned to the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina hit.
Marine Pollution Control is a private firm that works to do environmental cleanup in different areas after natural disasters hit.
Their company was on hand at the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 and served as an advisor to the Saudi Arabia government’s Meteorology Environmental Protection Agency during Desert Storm.
This time around, Mike worked as a technical support advisor for the U.S. Coast Guard in Baton Rouge while Adam, a 2003 Oxford High School graduate, was a member of the rapid response team in Marerro.
With his 27 years of experience at Marine Pollution Control, Mike was requested by the Coast Guard to help in their efforts.
‘The Coast Guard is overseeing the operations that are going on and then what I would do is work with them making suggestions and recommendations,? he said.
The Murphy Oil Refinery in Chalmette was one of the badly flooded areas that Mike had to deal with. Complete neighborhoods were up to their attics in water and oil.
‘We’d have to go in there and de-water, then we took sand trucks and laid sand on the oil to absorb the oil,? he said.
Street sweepers were then brought in to clean up more oil, which would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to effectively assess the area.
Adam spent his days in the outskirts of New Orleans operating the water pumps and dealt with the technical side of the rapid response team.
‘We just kept the equipment up, made sure it was ready to go,? he said.
Even though they both worked up to 16 hour days, Mike and Adam never got the chance to work together.
Other oil spills from barges on the Bayou were also a feat for Mike and his crew to overcome.
Working with a team of scientists from New Orleans, he said some marshes had to be carefully burned in order to get rid of the oil. The root system, which wasn’t burned, was salvaged for new growth next year.
‘There’s a whole variety of things you look at and a whole variety of people with expertise that are looking at these different methods,? he said.
Not only were the lives of the residents affected, wildlife also had a hard time coping with the disaster.
Mike said snakes, alligators and wild boars could be seen on a daily basis by him and his team of 12.
‘There were some snake bites at different locations,? he said.
Although the Popa’s love the travel their job entails, they say it does have its drawbacks.
Being the father of four, Mike has had to miss high school football games and events. He even spent his birthday down in New Orleans.
‘It almost makes my wife kind of a single parent for those six weeks,? he said. ‘It’s very stressful.?
Even though their jobs mean time away from the family, they said it was ‘very rewarding? to see what they accomplished in the six weeks they were down there.
All the water was pumped out of the neighborhoods, oil was re-collected and taken to refineries, and sensitive marshes were saved.
‘The risk is no longer there as far as further contamination,? Mike said.