Clancy's Flotilla

Text Box: Reporter's Notebook
Clancy’s Flotilla By KEN WELLS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 7, 2005 MADISONVILLE, La.—This is a story of a semi-heroic unrescue. Clancy DuBos, a gangly, loquacious New Orleanean in a hunter-orange ballcap, t-shirt and baggy shorts, has assembled a flotilla of four fishing boats and gathered his fifteen or so volunteers around him on a dock at a marina here, where the stagnating flood waters of Hurricane Katrina have turned the Tchefuncte River into a chocolate brown gumbo of stench. A brisk breeze, which would normally be welcomed on mornings as sunny and sultry as this, sends the river odor whirling through the air, where none can escape it. A lawyer by training, Mr. DuBos ticks off the challenges of the day: to bring out “eight old people” trapped in a lakefront New Orleans community of about 500 people cut off by Katrina’s flood waters and thus far immune from official scrutiny. The neighborhood, where he himself lived until the storm, is mostly dry but so hard to reach from the soggy, stricken city itself, that we will strike across the lake from the north. This involves a 28-mile boat trip the length of Lake Pontchartrain, where 15-knot winds have already kicked up a nasty chop. Indeed, boaters who have already tried the crossing in a small fishing craft tell us they were driven back by six-foot swells. Once across, the boats will have to anchor near the mouth of Bayou St. John and we will wade ashore to meet up with Aaron, a man on a four-wheel all-terrain-vehicle packing one or more guns. Mr. DuBos describes Aaron as a “vigilante, protecting the neighborhood from looters, “but he’s on our side. He knows we’re coming.” The Coast Guard, the Air National Guard, the New Orleans police, should any of them be about, don’t know we’re coming, however. So should we be buzzed by official choppers, which seems a certainty, we are to turn toward them and salute. This is a prearranged signal that they should not shoot us as looters. The 50-something Mr. DuBos had been hoping to get a box load of hunter-orange caps of the kind he’s wearing so that every volunteer would have one. But the man who promised to bring them is a no-show, as is a man from Lake Charles who was coming with a 25-foot boat. Before we launch, Mr. DuBos, clutching a detailed list of the 200 or so houses in the neighborhood, allows that another of the challenges we face is that the cluster of elderly we are going to fetch have thus far resisted being fetched. “But today’s the day—we have to get them out. When we find them, just say we’ve called a meeting at Clancy’s house. Once we get them there, we’ve got them.” *** Lake Pontchartrain is a palate of whitecaps on a freshening wind and a half hour into our crossing we lose a boat to mechanical problems. It will limp back to port. With some difficulty, Mr. DuBos, who is in the stricken boat, makes a precarious, jolting transfer into another and we’re off again. The New Orleans skyline looms in miniature in the far, hazy distance, rescue and relief helicopters filling the air like dragonflies, but there are heartening views nearer. To our left, traffic is moving across the bee-line Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the elevated span which had been closed since the storm and thought to be damaged. Schools of mullet and speckled trout sporadically roil the waters, meaning the lake--for now—is reasonably healthy. In normal times, on a day like today, the lake would be full of sports fishing boats but it’s strangely deserted and mildly dangerous. Debris—street signs, rafts of splintered wood, floating telephone poles, even abandoned boats—is everywhere. Ninety bouncing minutes later, we catch sight of the chalky white, damaged roof of the Louisiana Superdome and, using the dome as a marker, we make land. On shore, Mr. DuBos and another neighborhood resident, Dee Geoghegan (cq), a charter-boat fishing captain, briskly scale the 15-foot high storm levee, head for Mr. DuBos’s house, which will be used as a staging area for any evacuees we find. Aaron, our friendly vigilante, is nowhere in sight. Sprawling before us is a startling scene—a gorgeous neighborhood of mostly imposing and architecturally singular houses, empty as the deep woods, the only sounds chirping birds, skittering squirrels and the occasional helicopter thrumming above. An astonishing number of huge pines are down, as if some intemperate giant had come along and snapped them off as he went. Some streets are impassable. Yet, an unusually large number of the houses have been spared any damage. We later see a house made almost entirely of glass--and not a window is broken. We see an imposing sports-fishing boat, parked in front of its abandoned home. Its name is the Lucky Strike and lucky indeed. Six feet away is a massive fallen oak that would have broken the Lucky Strike in two. Mr. DuBos who, among his various enterprises publishes an alternative newspaper in New Orleans, says the neighborhood was developed just after World War II by visionary planners who laid it out in a system of clusters that insured every house faced a small park or green space. A lot of the neighborhood pioneers still live here, “meaning we have a lot of elderly,” as do young families from the professional class. Houses start at about $500,000 and go to more than $1 million (or they did before the storm.) His own house, which we reach after a ten minute walk, is architecturally significant: it was designed and built of poured concrete by Andrew Jackson Higgins, the man who helped win World War II by inventing the landing craft. It’s a large, airy, rambling place, two stories, with a green roof and eclectic art on the walls. A New Orleans Times-Picayune, warning of Katrina’s approach, sits unread on a coffee table. He scrounges up some batteries for some walky-talkies he’s brought along and consults with Mr. Geoghegan. We’ll go roust some of the old folks while Mr. Geoghegan makes the rounds feeding an estimated 100 dogs and cats stranded by the storm. “We got a list of the pets and we broke windows to get in,” says Mr. Geoghegan. Two hundred pounds of pet food, brought in on previous missions, are stashed at his house. Not long into our elderly patrol we run into Aaron on his ATV. He’s a young, blond guy in cargo pants and a tan t-shirt, sporting a pony tail and a blue N.O.P.D. ball cap. He doesn’t look much like a vigilante. His full name is Aaron Stewart, by profession a man who builds mule carriages for the New Orleans tourist trade. He he’s been staying here with his girlfriend, Lucille Madden, a mule-carriage driver and tour guide, and her son John who rode ought the storm at Lucille’s sister’s house nearby. Aaron moved them moved them in to her own neighborhood home here by flatboat when Katrina dumped three-feet of water in her sister’s house. Aaron, unarmed at the moment, is in good spirits for a man ostensibly trapped in a hurricane-ravaged neighborhood. “We shot a couple of ducks yesterday,” he tells Mr. DuBos, “ and cooked them up. Raided some crab traps on the lake.” He’s also happy to report that the 30 mules belonging to the company that Ms. Madden works for have been rescued—though not the poor mules of a competitor, which drowned in their stables. He says that the neighborhood is quiet save for a few other residents who have come up Bayou St. John by boat to remove possessions from their homes. He drives off, following an intricate circuit of trails he’s carved through the tree-jumbled landscape. Aaron is clearly having fun. We reach a house where Mr. DuBos has reason to believe that an elderly woman named Lena may have rode out the storm. He knocks loudly on the door: “Miss Lena, Miss Lena, Miss Lena!” No reply. More knocks, more silence. The house is locked up tight and there are no signs of distress. We move on, following Mr. DuBos’s list but a couple hours later nary an elderly strandee has been found. Other boats have come in over the past two days and the theory is that the trapped elderly may have gone out on them. Another search group has had better luck. They’ve found at home Carey W. Mavor, a retired 75-year-old marine freight inspector and onetime oil-rig worker in his modest brick cottage on Swallow Street. He’s a lean, balding man with Katrina chin stubble and wide, black framed glasses. He stuck it out through the storm, two dogs, Black Magic and Elvis for company. He describes it a never ending “freight train roaring overhead.” His family took shelter in Montgomery, Ala., had he’s stayed put because, having monitored relief efforts on a battery-powered radio “I don’t want to get stuck in the relief system.” Indeed, after an hour of cajoling, this is still Mr. Mavor’s opinion. He’s got plenty of provisions and until a relative comes within a boat ride to claim him, he’s not going anywhere. Mr. DuBos later hears this report and shrugs. “Well, this is closure—everybody who wanted out is out.” He and others set out on another mission, to shut off all the gas mains to the remaining houses here. Having struck out on the elderly we strike out for the landing at Madisonville, not wanting to be caught on the lake after dark. We do have evacuees, though. Aaron is staying behind but Lucille Madden and her 15-year-old son John are coming with us—he has to get to school someplace. He was attending St. Stanislaus High School in Bay St. Louis, Miss., but it’s been put out of commission by the storm and Lucille has to search for a new school for him. But when John gets settled, Lucille wants to return to her house, and Aaron, and visit with Mr. Mavor, if he’s still there.