By James Ronald Skains
Journal Correspondent

A tour of the back-roads of Tangipahoa and Washington parishes in Louisiana and adjacent Mississippi counties following Hurricane Katrina provided a disturbing first hand view of the damage to the timber in that area.

Before crossing I-55 north of Hammond, we only saw a few limbs broken off and an occasional vulnerable tree blown over. However, after motoring into eastern Tangipahoa parish, we began to see a few oak trees blown over and an occasional pine tree down.

In a short time, we saw numerous large and small pine trees on the ground and on people's houses. In many places we saw that road crews had to cut up trees fallen across the highway. By the time we had traveled about 25 miles east of I-55, most houses were damaged and large areas of large and small trees were in crisscross patterns on the ground.

The closer we got to Bogalusa, the more down power lines we saw. It was unsettling to cross downed power lines stretching across the highway. Most of the residents in that part of Washington parish were still without electricity on Sunday, September 18.

The Mississippi Forestry Commission estimates that $2.4 billion dollars of commercial and urban forests were heavily damaged by Katrina and will take more than two years to clean-up. Unless pine log timber is harvested within a short time, it begins to get "blue-streaks" and rapidly loses its value for making lumber. The other option is to use the downed timber for chips for paper mills and for boiler fuel.

According to the trade publication Random Lengths, framing lumber has risen nearly 14% since the hurricane hit. Structural panel prices were up 38% according to RL. However, many forest industry experts are not certain that higher prices for forest products will be the long-term results of Katrina.

Bruce Amundson, a spokesman for the Weyerhaeuser Company pointed out in a public statement, "A lot depends on how the reconstruction takes place, and the type of construction. Do people go in with concrete? Do they go in with wood? At this point it is too early to tell."

Mike Moser, spokesman for Boise Cascade Company was quoted as saying, "Our company is having trouble predicting the impact of the hurricane in part because it doesn't know how much a volatile energy market--which is also being affected by Katrina--may hurt the cost of operations."

"Obviously when prices go up we make more money, but also we've been impacted in other ways because energy costs are spiking and continue to go up," Moser said.

After successfully navigating the back-roads of Tangipahoa Parish, we reached the papermill town of Bogalusa that was still struggling to get their streets cleared and electrical power restored. Then we made the decision to cross over into Mississippi and try to make our way through the main path of Katrina's fury down to Bay St. Louis.

The closer we got to Katrina's main path, the more trees we saw snapped off about 10 to 12 feet in the air. This type of damaged timber is basically only suitable for chips and boiler fuel. Traveling down Highway 43 in Mississippi, we occasionally observed a house that appeared to have no damage.\par }{\plain After passing through Kiln, where relief operations were in full bloom and was a staging area for electrical repair crews, we crossed under I-10, we began to see another type of devastation. Not only were trees and power lines down, but all over the area were cars and trucks that had been caught in the storm surge.

We decided to try and make it to downtown Bay St. Louis or what was left of it. It wasn't a pretty sight. Piles of broken buildings, autos, asphalt and concrete from streets and perhaps the worst sight was the huge pile of debris that had once been the St. Stanaslaus School that had withstood hurricanes for the last 150 years.

Later, we viewed the remains of the Highway 90 bridge that connected Bay St. Louis. Both Waveland and Bay St. Louis were brimming with military personnel as well as relief agencies both private and state agencies, and of course, the Red Cross. People were apparently living in tents, automobiles, and parts of ruined store buildings.

We made one final pass down the once famous Beach Boulevard that had once been the home to hundreds of grand old homes and a large number of newer homes. In a two mile drive along an eroded Beach Boulevard, we only saw parts of two different houses still standing. Mostly we just observed the remains of concrete or brick steps indicating where houses once stood. Apparently when the storm surge hit the houses, they just exploded.

A few stately old oak trees, veterans of numerous hurricanes, were still standing up right. Many residents who had returned to find nothing left of their houses except the foundation had hung American flags to the old oak trees. One verbose former resident of Beach Blvd. had hand written a sign near his American flag that said, "God Bless America, thanks to the good Lord and State Farm."

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