LDWF begins assessing damage to coast

• By JOE MACALUSO
• Advocate Outdoors writer
• Published: Sep 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 8:40 a.m.

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Teams of state marine and inland fisheries were in the air Thursday surveying the effects Hurricane Gustav had on the state’s saltwater and brackish-water coastal areas and freshwater fishing resources.

“It’s possible that by Friday (today) we will have preliminary reports on what happened and what’s happening on our waterways,” Department of Wildlife and Fisheries press secretary Bo Boehringer said Thursday.

Boehringer said Wildlife Division biologists will view the coast today with flyovers scheduled for coastal marshes and as many as 30 of the state’s wildlife management areas along the south-to-north path Gustav carved through Louisiana.

He reiterated the immediate search-and-rescue component in the agency’s hurricane readiness plan is over, and that Enforcement Division agents — the state’s lead search-and-rescue teams — returned to their regions as early as Wednesday morning to tackle search-and-rescue missions in flooded areas in the northern parishes.

“We’ve shifted the from our primary search-and-rescue mission to habitat assessment,” Boehringer said. “The big job we have for the end of this week is to get back home, back into the office building. Like everyone else, we’ve been without electricity (service) and have been operating the entire department on generators for most of the last four days.”

Meanwhile, eyewitness accounts and post-Gustav problems surfaced Thursday.

Veteran speckled trout angler Terry St. Cyr has had a camp at Grand Isle for most of the last 40 years. He rebuilt a camp in the middle of the island three years ago after Hurricane Katrina came close to leveling the state’s only inhabited barrier island.

“The major destruction is the (sand) levee across the front of the island from Caminada Pass to the public library is on the road,” St. Cyr said Thursday.

Caminada Pass marks the west end of the island, and the public library marks the halfway point down the eight-mile-long island.

St. Cyr’s camp is about six miles into the island from the bridge that links it to the Caminada Chenier and the mainland.

“All the new construction (since Katrina) on the island made it through OK and the new metal roofs withstood the storm,” St. Cyr said. “Bridge Side is OK, the marina and the cottages.”