Flood Plains Read Free Page A

hydraulic lifts, the taping machines, the screwdrivers and the clatter of moving hundreds of half-built computers on and off the lines and into work stations made for a noisy workplace on its own. Populate that cavernous space with four hundred people, and it was like working on a busy airport’s runway. Rain pouring down on the steel roof should’ve added to the cacophony but was mostly drowned out.
    Muhammad shoved his lunch into one of the break room refrigerators. He rejoined the 320 some-odd day-shifters now waiting to take their places on the line. A clock with a red digital display hanging high above the factory floor showed that it was 6:04.
    The jungle drums got louder and louder, resembling rolls of thunder.
    “Hey there, Big Time.”
    Still drinking his coffee and cola combo, Big Time sidled up next to a twenty-five-year-old hyper-obese onetime gangbanger named Elmer Gonzales who worked with him in pack.
    “Mornin’, Elmer. They sound like they mean it this morning.”
    The 350-pound tattooed and mohawked giant laughed, causing his glasses to almost pop off his pumpkin-like head, so stretched were they. He would show anyone who asked the scythe-shaped scar around his midsection from where he’d been shot up many years before, but his jovial nature made him anything but threatening.
    “Let’s hear it, Big Money,” Elmer quipped.
    Big Time cupped his hands around his mouth and angled his head up.
    “ARF!!! ARF!!! ARF!!!”
    Above the cacophony of the drums, two night-shifters quickly responded.
    “ Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-AH!!! AH!!! AH!!! ” came a pair of gibbon-like monkey calls.
    “ RRRRRROOOOOOWWWWRRRRRRR!!! ” a jaguar joined in from a different line.
    Elmer and a couple of the other day-shifters laughed.
    “You got another one in ya?”
    “Let’s see,” Big Time replied, taking a deep breath. “ WOOOOF!!! WOOOOF!!! WOOOOF!!! ”
    Big Time’s Doberman yell got a couple of appreciate claps from coffee-sipping day-shifters. Before any night-shifters could respond, the shift-change buzzer sounded and bodies immediately swept off the line. Big Time pulled his ground wire out of his pocket, slipped it onto his wrist, and climbed the six short steps to the floor.
    “Aw, shit,” said Elmer, glancing around. “Guess Big Time Jr. didn’t make it.”
    Elmer was right. No Alan.
    Big Time spotted Zakiyah and figured she had to leave without him again.
    “He’d better not leave us shorthanded. Gonna have to whip that boy.”
    •  •  •
    The Gulf of Mexico was notoriously tempestuous, particularly at the Port of New Orleans, where the rushing Mississippi smashed into the swirling sea. Oilfield services workers toiled around the clock to keep up with repairs to the pipelines running from the oil platforms to the refineries that ringed Pontchartrain. When a hurricane entered the Gulf, the services teams went into overdrive to make certain everything was ready to weather the storm. These same teams took a hit in the public opinion department when New Orleans’s refineries were back in operation four days after Hurricane Katrina while much of the citizenry continued to suffer.
    The workers wore this as a badge of honor, however, and considered themselves just about the only people who knew how bad the hurricane would be and acted accordingly. When Eliza made landfall at Banes, Cuba, and continued across the mainland past Holguin, Las Tunas, Camaguey, and Matanzas before returning to the Gulf at Havana, it was expected that she would slow down. When instead it had the effect of distributing its energy outward rather than being dulled by the gradations of the land below (the topography having the effect of concentrating its power on a secondary wind maxima that relieved the pressure on the eye wall), the services team knew that this could be a very, very bad storm and began to prepare accordingly.
    Skeleton crews were sent to lock down the platforms just as their regular workers were sent back to the