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.