Katrina Stirs Up Oily Nightmare

(CBS)  St. Bernard Parish is classic south Louisiana, with beautiful marshes and estuaries -- and oil refineries.

As The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith reports, the parish has been virtually inaccessible for days, with what really is the worst case, absolute nightmare scenario: a natural disaster made worse by an oil spill.

Street after street in St. Bernard Parish is covered in oil sludge.

Smith describes it as "a stinky, grotesque goo," created when heavy crude from a local refinery mixed in with the enormous storm surge from Hurricane Katrina.

"Everything this stuff touches is contaminated," Smith observes.

Dr. Ryan Truxillo can't believe what's happened to his old neighborhood, calling it "surreal. This is something you see happens to other people, nameless people, on TV. This doesn't happen in your neighborhood or your backyard."

The contaminated area covers two-to-four square miles of residential neighborhoods in Chalmette.

Benzene in the crude is a carcinogen, dangerous whether you touch it or breathe it.

The toxic cocktail that drenched Chalmette means these neighborhoods will probably have to flattened.

"There is no housing" there anymore, declares Larry Ingargiola, who heads emergency management in the parish.

"There is no housing," echoes parish president Henry Rodriguez Jr. "There's nobody who can come back here and live in a house, nowhere in this parish."

"These men have a problem," Smith remarks, "and it didn't help matters much that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) took a week to show up."

What's the message Ingargiola and Rodriguez have for FEMA chief Michael Brown?

Says Ingargiola: "We were left alone. We need your help now. We're not gonna bitch with you or do anything like that. We need your help. We don't bite (the hand) that's feedin' you right now."

Rodriguez asserts, "Our federal government can't be incompetent and stupid all at one time," says the other. "You got to know we got problems down here."

Brown showed up Tuesday and, while there were plenty of smiles and handshakes, Rodriguez wasn't afraid to throw up a few expletives to make his point, exclaiming, "I don't want 'em hijacking none of my (beep) money. That's why I'm here."

FEMA, says Smith, is a four-letter word in south Louisiana. Many folks here feel, if it didn't work, its Brown's fault.

Asked pointblank by Smith if he "screwed this up," Brown responded, "No. No."

And what if an investigation finds things weren't done right, who'd he accountable?

"That's what the investigation will find out. That's what the investigation will tell us."

St. Bernard Parish needs some federal grease to help clean up the slick in its backyard.

But, Smith adds, no one here is bad mouthing oil: Oil means jobs and frankly, the folks down here feel like they do a lot of the dirty work for a country that can't live without its products.

It's summed up by Rodriguez, who says, "They're gonna come help us because of this. Oil."