EDITOR’S NOTE: Staff writer Gina Smith spent a day with state Department of Natural Resources officers taking part in a rescue and recovery mission in New Orleans. All 38 members of the team returned to South Carolina on Friday. Here is what they experienced.

NEW ORLEANS — You’d never expect a South Carolinian to say such a thing.

“Hurricane Hugo, that wasn’t even a good shower of rain,” said Capt. Harvin Brock, a member of a South Carolina search and rescue contingent working here this week. “It’s nothing compared to this.”

But as his john boat makes its way along a flooded New Orleans street in the Bywater neighborhood — now black water canals — you realize Brock’s assessment is true.

Homes, flooded to the rooftops. Holes punched through roofs, evidence that people desperately tried to escape the rising waters after two levees poured water into this city Aug. 30.

And the bodies, floating face down and bloated. The whining, panting dogs trapped on porches and rooftops. Out of desperation they sometimes jump into the foul water and try swimming for passing boats.

Brock and 37 other game wardens from the Upstate to the Lowcountry didn’t expect anything like this when they came this week to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

They got the call last Friday to pack their black Chevy trucks, hook up their john boats boats and make tracks to New Orleans for search and rescue missions.

The team was picked because of their boats, most about 16 feet long, are large enough to carry multiple survivors to safety, but are still maneuverable enough to make tight turns in shallow water.

The team also is trained to handle M-16s, long, black rifles that each straps across his bulletproof vest.

For backup, each straps a handgun in his hip holster.

“This is like a war zone,” said Tim Baxley, a game warden from Pinewood.

Angus MacBride of Mount Pleasant takes it further. “I lost everything I owned during Hurricane Hugo. I was in the first boat when we invaded Kuwait City, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

LOOKING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE

Their days start around 5 a.m. after a few hours’ sleep in a large auditorium at a research facility in Baton Rouge, about 60 miles from New Orleans. The capital city’s population of 227,000 has nearly doubled in Katrina’s aftermath, filling hotel rooms and shelters.

For a couple of hours, the convoy of trucks snakes through heavy traffic. Interstate10 into the city stays jammed with emergency vehicles, police cars, evacuees and relief organizations with truckloads of bottled water and red gas cans.

Over their two-way radios, the men share jokes and small talk as their convoy eases onto grassy shoulders to get around traffic and push forward.

Don’t let the joking fool you, advises Scott Powell of Georgetown: The men take the job seriously. It’s just a means of coping with the stress and devastation.

In all, the guys have rescued more than 100 people, including children.

Powell tells of helping two elderly women out of their flooded house and into the boat. They hadn’t evacuated because they didn’t want to go up in a helicopter or out in a boat.

But as the days went by and the water didn’t recede, they had a change of heart.

“We got them in the boat and they were shaking so badly they couldn’t open a bottle of water,” Powell said. “It just feels great to help these people out.”

Once inside the city, the group joins the New Orleans Police Department.

Some days, the combined forces conduct rescues. Other days, they guard utility workers working on towers who risk dodging bullets.

But by Wednesday — the game wardens’ last day in the city before heading home — New Orleans neighborhoods are silent, watery ghost towns.

The group slowly boats down flooded streets, looking for signs of life. There are no mosquitoes or other annoying insects. They can’t survive skimming this fetid water.

“Hello, hello,” they shout as their boats crawl past homes, schools and churches completely inaccessible by foot.

Only whining dogs call back. House alarms sound out gurgle warnings too late.

Occasionally the men stiffen as a loud scrape echoes off the houses. The boats’ bottoms are literally running over the top of a stop sign or a submerged car.

In spots where the water gets too shallow, the men pull up their waders, ease in and pull the boats to deeper water.

They are meticulous in keeping the water off them as much as possible, rubbing antibacterial soap into their arms and hands whenever it splashes on them.

Still, several have developed red pustules that look similar to poison ivy on their arms, necks and legs.

Some are hopeful it’s some sort of heat rash from the merciless sun that beats on them all day. But most believe it’s from the toxic water that splashes up when airboats pass and military helicopters fly low.

SMELL OF DEATH

S.C. game wardens are long used to being called the possum police and mud marshals, but time alone in the woods has left them with a keen sense of smell and hearing.

Powell detects gas leaks before his boat passes by the bubbling of water where lines have broken.

But sometimes, the smells of New Orleans are just too overbearing.

“It’s one of those smells you can’t describe,” said Todd Campbell of Chester as he rubs Vicks on his upper lip.

“It’s a mix of sewage, rot and death. It gets in your pores, under your fingernails.”

Even the Vicks doesn’t work when the smell of death emanates from a house. Warm, wet, distinct.

At other times, a body floats by with the debris.

“Don’t ever look them in the eye,” advises Dudley Britt of Ballentine. “You can’t internalize it or personalize it. It’s just a shell.”

He’s followed the advice religiously for 23 years ever since he saw his first body, a man who had drowned in Lake Murray. It lets him keep doing the job.

While the game wardens call in the body locations to the New Orleans police, they don’t pick them up. Their job is to find the living. By late afternoon, they have only come across a few people. But none wants to leave.

“I’ve got a dog and cat here,” said one shirtless man as he stood on his porch. “I’ll leave but not today.”

So the men move on.