The Unsinkable Molly Morgan

The Unsinkable Molly Morgan

By Emma Boyce

Days after Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category Four at Port Fourchon, Louisiana, Molly Morgan of Morgan Oil in Marshall received an email from the Louisiana Oil Marketers Association.

It was a Saturday. In Virginia, the hurricane had come and gone, mostly with gentle rain and fleeting headlines touting New Orleans as the sinking city. No one had heard of LaPlace, some thirty minutes from the city, or the other small hamlets in bayou country ravaged by 150 mile-an-hour winds, the fifth strongest winds in U.S. history. And when Molly Morgan saw an area in need of fuel, she didn’t hesitate.

“It’s what we do,”she said in that always cheery voice that makes even a 16-hour drive sound like a walk around the block. “Whenever we see a chance to help someone, we like to pay it forward, whether it’s giving fuel or helping someone with their heating or their air conditioning or even if they’re just having a hard time. It’s easy to help people.”

Within days, Molly, Mike Neish, and Morgan Oil President Greg Gibson began a 1,000-plus mile drive to LaPlace, Galliano, and Mathews, three of the hardest hit towns. Neish and Gibson had done it before, delivering fuel to Biloxi, Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.

“They came back like zombies because they had never seen such devastation,” Molly said.

After two days of driving, they arrived at LaPlace, a ghost town. Mattresses sat in piles outside destroyed houses. Telephone poles and power lines leaned onto the street. Molly noticed an X painted on one house. After asking several onlookers about its meaning, a man pulled her aside and said it signified a dead body inside.

“The only people in the town were the relief workers, guys from the electric company, Red Cross, and the Salvation Army,” she said. “It was so hot. The houses were empty. No one was out in their yard. Nothing was open. There were piles of rubble everywhere. It was gruesome in a way because I knew why no one was there.”

Upon arrival, the Morgan Oil crew quickly delivered gallons of fuel in each of the three locations, so people could fill generators or the heavy equipment needed for clearing debris from the streets. At one centrally located truck stop, Molly traded a load of fuel for a diet coke. That gas served many of the relief workers’ trucks, a necessity to get the town up and running.

“Initially we were supposed to drive around and fill up generators but that got complicated because some of the roads were gone and people were still evacuated,” Molly said. “We ended up putting (the fuel) in tanks that made it possible for people to help other people.”

At night Molly, Gibson, and Neish had an hour-long drive back to New Orleans to sleep. The city hadn’t been as structurally affected as southern Louisiana, but things were still far from normal. Some residents looked frantically for houses to rent because their rain-weakened ceilings had fallen through. The trash formed wobbly ziggurats on the sidewalk.

One evening after returning from a delivery, Molly noticed a homeless man sleeping on the ground with a sleeping bag tugged over his head. A sign next to him read: “Free bottled water and MRE Meal. Please Help yourself.”

“That’s the New Orleans spirit,” she said. “Everyone is helping.” Later that night, Molly circled back and found the man awake and playing the banjo.

“I looked down and said thank you,” she said. “He smiled, shook his head and kept singing.”