Memorial Day, 2010

Some of the photographers in the press corps were starting to grumble. It was almost 9:30 in the morning and the light would be too flat by the time we made it out to the Gulf. In the lounge of Top Gun Aviation at the airfield in Hammond, Louisiana, about sixty miles north of New Orleans, we waited for the Coast Guard plane on leather chairs facing the runway, feet propped on matching leather ottomans. A freelance photographer from Alabama talked about what was going on in his state, efforts to protect Dauphin Island from the inevitable with a sand-berm barrier, something he said they try every year anyway to ward off erosion, and every year it gets washed away. We joked about how his governor had snatched up all of a certain type of polymer that turns oil into an easier-to-handle gelatinous solid, because he wanted to get it before the other governors did. Crises like this tend to turn Gulf Coast governors into squabbling siblings.

Coast Guard public-information liaison Larry Chambers, Petty Officer First Class, greeted us in a blue jumpsuit emblazoned with impressively wordy patches. The press corps, mostly in cargo pants, polo shirts, and baseball caps embroidered with their media affiliations, shuffled around in various attitudes of preparation, checking iPhones and gear in shoulder bags. When I mentioned to Chambers that I was a little concerned about the flight, since we’d driven through some storms coming in from New Orleans, he nodded and smiled sympathetically and then said, “You know, we’re the Coast Guard, we’re made for weather.”

Until he made that comment, I’d been kind of nervous about the flight but it reminded me that these were the guys and gals who’d rescued thousands of people after Katrina with such alacrity, dangling expertly from helicopters in the gusts of the rotors. Even though at the moment the Coast Guard command was being criticized for its response to the oil spill, for being too cozy with BP, after Katrina they had garnered a lot of well-deserved goodwill. Almost on cue, our transport arrived on the runway: a CASA HC-144A cargo plane, full-bellied with high wings, an upslanted rear, and enormous propellers. Crew technician Kevin Landry,¹ an affable young man in glasses and an olive drab jumpsuit, passed around a cardboard box of earplugs and gave us terse, slightly weary instructions. “Stay out of the way of the propellers. When exiting the aircraft always turn left. Away from the propellers. And, please, listen to me. When I tell you to do something,...