Mass. county sheriff hits the road to aid isolated La. mill town

BOGALUSA, La. -- On Sunday, a week after Hurricane Katrina tore through this old paper mill town hard by the Mississippi line, they still had not received any help from the outside world, and M.E. ''Toye" Taylor, the sleepless, homeless president of isolated, devastated Washington Parish, started to give up hope.

After church, Taylor, a God-fearing man, dropped to his knees at a friend's house and prayed for somebody, anybody, to show up. When he turned up dusty Bill Booty Road for the rural fire station that serves as the emergency headquarters for this parish of 45,000 people, he saw a vision out of Star Wars, a state-of-the-art, $1.2 million mobile command center with a 40-foot satellite tower.

Taylor, 51, hugged Middlesex County Sheriff James V. DiPaola so hard the Massachusetts lawman could hardly breathe.

''The sheriff and these boys from Massachusetts, I'll tell you, they were a Godsend," Taylor said. ''They were the first positive sign we got from the outside world. We thought everybody had forgotten about us."

Moved by the images he had seen on television, and especially by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's plea for help, DiPaola impulsively organized an eight-vehicle caravan with 17 of his deputies, leaving Boston on Friday evening.

''I couldn't watch anymore," DiPaola said yesterday, standing next to the converted bus that gave this battered corner of Louisiana its first reliable communication with the outside world since the storm hit. ''We didn't know who we were going to be able to help when we left. We just hit the road."

On the 28-hour drive down, with Deputy Sheriff Dave Winkowski at the wheel the whole way, DiPaola made contact with US Rep. Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden, who contacted Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's office, asking who needed a bunch of lawmen from Massachusetts with a sophisticated communications network. The answer was almost immediate: head for Washington Parish.

Taylor praised DiPaola's emotional, impulsive response, saying it was the antidote to a slow federal relief effort that has been weighed down by red tape and bureaucratic indecision.

''The federal government told us to wait. If you wait for approval, for all that red tape, people will die," said Taylor. He said at least three, and probably more, of his constituents died waiting for aid at various shelters.

Much attention has been paid to the fate of New Orleans, much less to the damage to people and property in more isolated regions like this. It was not water, but the 130-mile-per-hour winds that Katrina unleashed on this region north of Lake Ponchartrain that did the real damage. Bogalusa was founded in 1914 to harvest the trees that blanket this region, and once boasted the world's biggest sawmill. But Katrina made kindling of more trees than that sawmill ever did.

Ben Nevers, the state senator who represents Washington Parish and two other parishes, similar to counties, on Ponchartrain's north shore, said about 70 percent of the homes in 700-square-mile Washington Parish, which borders Mississippi to the north and east, were damaged; and about half of them are uninhabitable, after trees standing 50 to 100 feet tall were snapped in half like matchsticks.

''I've been in parishes all over southeastern Louisiana, and I think Washington Parish got hit the hardest, in terms of damage and devastation," said Nevers.

Yesterday, eight days after the storm hit, there was still no telephone service, no electricity, and no sense of how long it will take just to clear the thousands of trees that have fallen and sliced through houses.

Tom Thiebaud, the district fire chief who doubles as the local director of homeland security, said he and others were trapped by fallen trees around the fire station for two days before they could clear a path out. Taylor wrote an SOS on a single piece of paper and handed it to some National Guard soliders from the local armory, who then picked their way down to the capital of Baton Rouge, a 100-mile trip that took six hours.

''We were adrift, because we had no communications," said Thiebaud.

A few days later, Nevers and Taylor drove to Baton Rouge and pleaded for help. But it didn't show up until the Massachusetts contingent rolled into town Sunday morning. ''The biggest difference is the Internet access we got from Sheriff DiPaola's unit," said Thiebaud. ''It reconnected us with the outside world. We were sailing blind for a week."

Michael Cagno, who manages the technology for the Middlesex Sheriff's Office, said the Internet access has been used to coordinate relief efforts. But it also was used to help a couple pay their mortgage online.

DiPaola said he and his deputies plan on staying about two weeks, but he said he may rotate other deputies through.

The Middlesex county unit was the first -- but not the last -- of New England law enforcement agencies to make an impact in the devastated region. An advance team of Boston police and Massachusetts State Police and paramedics from the Boston area arrived in Baton Rouge on Monday and are consulting with local authorities to figure out where and how they can be best utilized.

Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Patrick Crossen said the Massachusetts officers may be able to relieve New Orleans officers who have worked to the point of exhaustion. ''We'll do anything that's asked of us," Crossen said.

That generosity of spirit has touched Louisianans.

Taylor, who has barely slept since the storm hit, said the outside help, including ambulance drivers from Chicago who, like DiPaola, just showed up, has given him hope.

''As bad as the federal government has handled this thing, when you see people just drop everything, and drive in here from Massachusetts, or Illinois, or wherever, you realize this is one heck of a country, and we're all together," Taylor said, choking back tears. ''The only way we get through all of this is if we act as one country."