Three Northwest Georgians are among a crew sent by the Georgia Forestry Commission to help clean oil-soaked animals in the Gulf of Mexico.
Heath Morton from the Dade County office, Matt Rymer from Murray County and Kelly Towe from Fannin County are in Louisiana and Alabama, working on various aspects of the cleanup effort.
Northwest Georgia District Manager Troy Floyd said it's not the men's forestry management or firefighting skills that are being used, but their logistics training.
"We try to create order out of chaos," he said. "It's not necessarily what our background is that helps us clean wildlife, but we have a wide background on organizing and mobilizing resources."
The crew members are part of a team that has been called on in the past to fight wildfires, handle hurricane relief, search for the scattered debris of the Discovery space shuttle and manage logistics for the Atlanta Olympics and the G8 Conference on Sea Island, Ga.
Mr. Morton is organizing wildlife recovery in Grand Isle, La.; Mr. Towe is running the emergency responder radio system in Houma, La.; and Mr. Rymer is on a wildlife recovery team in Mobile, Ala.
Mr. Morton said the devastation in Grand Isle is "probably one of the worst catastrophes ever in the history of the United States."
"We just get big surges of oil that come in. That's when we have our most birds," he said over the phone from Louisiana, where he's been since May 31.
His team recovers oil-covered birds, then cleans and stabilizes them for transport to larger facilities, where they'll receive more cleaning and recuperation. The first day, the team cleaned 60 birds. It cares for about 20 on most of the other days, he said.
Wendy Burnette, a spokeswoman for Georgia Forestry, said the department usually has agreements with other state and federal agencies to reimburse the labor costs when it assigns foresters to other projects.
In this case, because no agreement has been reached, the workers essentially are taking personal leave and picking up temporary jobs with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, she said.
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Andy began working at the Times Free Press in July 2008 as a general assignment reporter before focusing on Northwest Georgia and Georgia politics in May of 2009. Before coming to the Times Free Press, Andy worked for the Anniston Star, the Rome News Tribune and the Campus Carrier at Berry College, where he graduated with a communications degree in 2006. He is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee ...
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