At a time such as this, you want the guys who can
still thread a line when their hands are wet and cold. They’re descending on
Houston in their fleets of flat-bottomed aluminum boats, the sport fishermen
and duck hunters outnumbering the government rescuers by the hundreds, their
skiffs sitting low in the floodwaters with their human catch in the back,
clutching plastic-wrapped possessions.
The country is suddenly grateful for this “Cajun
Navy,” for their know-how, for the fact that they can read a submerged log in
the water, and haul their boats over tree stumps and levees and launch them
from freeway junctions. There are no regulators to check their fishing licenses
or whether they have a fire extinguisher and life preservers on board, which
they don’t. They’re used to maneuvering through the cypress of Caddo Lake or
the hydrilla and coontail of the Atchafalaya, where the water might be four
feet or it might rise to 18, and the stinking bog is called “coffee grinds”
because of the way boots sink in it. Spending hours in monsoon rains doesn’t
bother them, because they know ducks don’t just show up on a plate, and they’ve
learned what most of us haven’t, that dry comfort is not the only thing worth
seeking.
. . .
They speak an oddly poetic language, of
spinnerbait and jigs, chatterbait and Texas rigs, of palomar knots and turls.
They have suspended their pursuit of bass and black crappies, blue gills and
redfish, crawfish and panfish, to motor through subdivisions, shirtless in the
rain. You can’t help but be struck by just how much they know how to do — and
how much your citified self doesn’t. Trim a rocking boat, tie a secure knot,
navigate the corduroying displaced water, and interpret the faint dull colors
in the mist-heavy clouds.
Buster Stoker, 21, is a heavy equipment operator
for R&R Construction in Sulphur, La., and spends the rest of his time in
his 17-foot aluminum Pro Drive marsh boat, fishing for alligator-gar in the
heat of summer and chasing fowl through water-thickets in the winter.
“The best day on the water is every day on the
water,” he said.
He and several other construction colleagues met
in the company parking lot Monday morning at 5 a.m., loaded up with gas and
supplies, and headed toward Houston. They launched their little fleet of 14
craft from the intersection of Highway 90 and 526, and over the next several
hours they pulled hundreds of people out of their flooded homes in
subdivisions, hauling them aboard like gasping bass.
. . .
This Cajun Navy is a nebulous, informal thing. It
has no real corps or officers. It’s “an intensely informal and unorganized
operation,” says Academy Award-winning filmmaker Allan Durand, a Lafayette,
La., native., who did a documentary on the “Cajun Navy” volunteer-boats
following Katrina.
. . .
The same groups have by now acquired deep
experience in storm-aid and are growing thanks to social media. They were
critical in helping Baton Rouge residents during historic flooding there a year
ago, when federal help wasn’t forthcoming. It’s a movement basically founded on
the realization that large government agencies aren’t quick-moving.
According to Honore, they have become utterly
essential.
“The first-responders aren’t big enough to do
this,” he said. “You might have a police force of 3,000, and maybe 200 know how
to handle a boat.”
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