By Bill Rauch
This picture from 19 years ago shows most, but not all, of “The Beaufort Chainsaw Brigade,” that traveled with their chainsaws to Long Beach, Miss., in early September 2005 to rescue people trapped without electricity in their damaged homes by Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans got the storm’s eye and all the publicity. But Long Beach, situated right on the coast on New Orleans’ east side, was forgotten. The people there who did not evacuate endured the sustained 170-plus mph winds off the Gulf and the 20-plus-foot storm surge that was driven by those winds.
Long Beach Mayor Billy Skellie told me he needed gas, “because when the Feds showed up they commandeered all the gas in the service stations, so the people here who want to get out,
can’t get out.”
Beaufort’s United Way supplied two tankers full of gas — one pictured at top right in the photo — that were parked in the main fire station’s driveway and from which residents filled up for free.
And, the mayor said, “Send as many guys with chainsaws as you can.”
Beaufort’s 85-strong Chainsaw Brigade answered the call and drove their trucks 10 hours down to Long Beach, where they slept in the tents they had brought with them, bivouacked in the fire station’s side yard.
Behind the Brigade pictured here is the mess tent where Beaufort’s late, great Steve Brown arranged for everyone to get two hearty squares, and a bag lunch. The refrigerated truck full of meals can be seen with its door open behind the tent.
On those sticky Gulf coast mornings, these quiet heroes fanned out all over the city, each spending all day clearing with their chainsaw its driveways and streets so that the forgotten people of Long Beach, Miss., could finally get out.
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has twice won awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at TheRauchReport@gmail.com.
