Images of A Calamity

6 a.m., August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina comes ashore for the second time, after first striking southeast Florida the previous week. It’s target: Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. The results are disasterous for the coastal village of Buras and her neighbors along Highway 23 that parrallels the Mississippi southeast through the marshes into the Gulf. These were among the first, but by no means the last, victims of the storm’s furious assault on the Southeastern United States.

These photographs were some of the first I received as early surveys began to reveal the enormous extent of the damage.

Taken by field crews from the Hazard Evaluations and Technical Assistance Branch of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health out of Parkway, Mississippi, they indicate the significant toll exerted on oil production and transmission facilities in the Gulf.

Yes, those are water moccasins.

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