Pilot's house near a levee becomes an improvised command center

摘要

When Capt. Charlie Clasen decided to hunker down and weather Hurricane Katrina, he had no idea his brand-new house behind the Mississippi River levee would look like it did a week after the storm. By then, Clasen's house was known up and down the river as Clasen Station. Clasen is Crescent 22 with the Crescent River Port Pilots' Association, responsible for piloting ships from the mouth of the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Most of Clasen's family headed north on Sunday morning. He stayed behind to protect the new house, 175 yards behind the west bank levee in Algiers, across the river from New Orleans. Two of his nephews — Capt. Christian Groff, Crescent 68, and William Clasen, a mate and deck hand on local harbor tugs — and a friend stayed to help.