The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 2/19/07 Section: News

George Cummings, an advocate of Lutheran Family Services, gives a presentation at the Multi-Disciplinary Research Conversation sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at the Tamasag Retreat Center on Saturday Febuary 17, 2007. The meeting was a Hurricane Katrina symposium.

Del Sandfort's work has led him to sacred ground - Ground Zero in New York, where he supervised a team of environmental health experts monitoring air quality at the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

But his work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was in a league of its own.

"On a scale of things, this is much worse than Ground Zero," Sandfort said.

Members of the Fort Collins and CSU communities gathered Saturday at the Tamasag Retreat Center in Bellvue to discuss the consequences of Hurricane Katrina and the continuing difficulties facing the people of the Gulf Coast.

Sandfort from the department of environmental and radiological health sciences joined Doug Rice from the department of environmental health services, Chester Watson of the department of civil engineering, and Lori Peek from the department of sociology to speak about various aspects of the storm and its aftermath.

The event was hosted by anthropology professor Kate Browne and sponsored by the department of anthropology and the vice president for research.

Sandfort monitored the health and safety of the cleanup crews as part of the Worker Safety and Health Annex. His job was to travel through various sectors of the city (9,000 square miles) and identify potential hazards to workers.

"Originally, when we were deployed to the area it was utter chaos," Sandfort said. "Most of the street signs were gone, but those that weren't were all turned 90 degrees on the pole so we relied heavily on GPS navigations."

In 24 hours, roughly 25 years worth of debris was created, Sandfort said. He said the amount of resources still being thrown at the cleanup efforts is mind-boggling.

"Over 500 million gallons of petroleum products flowed out because of the Murphy Oil Refinery spill," he said. "That alone is six square miles of contaminated earth. You would have to dig up four feet of contaminated soil, and replace it with four feet of safe soil."

Continued...

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