ML161616
People
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Playback
- Not specified
Media notes
Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Harry Roberts. Timecode In: 00:00:28. Timecode out: 00:42:11. Notes: Hurricane Katrina. Subject 2: (Sound Effects). Subtitle: Helicopter. Timecode In: 00:42:11. Timecode out: 00:42:28. Equipment Notes: Two-Channel Mono. Show: Louisiana Swamps Date: 09-15-05 HR = Harry Roberts CJ = Chris Joyce 00:00:00 [CJ: Tests audio.] 00:00:27 HR: Well, we passed a number of oil platforms small ones and I have seen a couple that are listing. I'm sure the damage is really extensive out here because this storm-- Ivan came father to the east and did a tremendous amount of damage to this part of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama's offshore oil production. 00:00:56 [CJ: are these small platforms, are they drilling or production?] 00:01:04 HR: They're production. They're wellheads is what they are. [CJ: and is each one connected to a pipeline?] 00:01:11 HR: Yeah, actually, if you could see the bottom here, it looks like a spider web, there are so many pipelines and that's part of the problem. The pipelines take a very substantial hit during a storm like this. Because you can imagine you know your cyclically loading the bottom with these big storm waves one after another after another and the pipes sometimes fail as well as the sediment that they're sitting on so you get big submarine landslides that move the pipelines, sometimes move the platforms, and even bury the platform. In Camille there was a platform, a Shell platform and Gulf Oil platform in block 70 off Southpass that both of them went down- the Shell platform completely fell over. And these are big multi- multi- million dollar platforms and the Gulf platform was completely buried in sediment and transported downslope. So these events, strong hurricanes like Katrina and Camille have a tremendous effect that very few people ever see because it's under the water surface but it has a really strong impact on the front of the delta especially. And in the shallow water areas of the continental shelf that have lots of pipelines and production platforms. 00:02:54 [Sound of Engine] 00:03:16 HR: You see that patch of brown material out there? That's storm debris that's floating around out in Chandeleur sound. Now were just about to i think encounter the ch islands [informal talking about pilots course.] 00:03:40 HR: I saw Breton Island back behind us we just passed over it. There's no sand visible. So all of the beach and sand around the marshy part of the interior of that island has been transported away. Eroded. And the only thing left was the marsh area that was anchoring some of that unconsolidated sand. 00:04:12 00:04:14 HR: There's a debris lying right there, you see? Material that washed out of the marshlands, and you can see pieces of manmade debris. I tell ya, I have never seen devastation like that. I can't imagine what Nagasaki looked like, but I can't imagine that it couldn't have been much worse that what we saw back there around Venice. 00:04:45 [CJ: The other thing that's interesting is that this area is so much controlled by water...it's an H2O dominated landscape. 00:05:08 HR: It's a saturated landscape, for sure. [CJ: All the cities that are respositories for all sorts of stuff, is now come out of this pulse and it's all over.] 00:05:28 HR: Yeah, that's true. As we talked about before this flight we have a team of people at LSU, in fact many teams of people who are now looking at the effects of pumping this water from the city of New Orleans out into Lake Pontchartrain. Lake Pontchartrain has very limited exchange with the open ocean, so the residence time for this toxic water will be quite a long time. And no one knows what the effect will be on Lake Pontchartrain's sediments and Lake Pontchartrain water, and Lake Pontchartrain's fish and other organic and organisms t... (Notes truncated)
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 20 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 20 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 20 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman