HOW HOT IS IT?

Don’t even ask the guys putting the roof on the Hard Rock in Biloxi

By JEAN PRESCOTT
jtprescott@sunherald.com

If you’re new to the area, you’ve probably noticed summer in the Deep South is hot and humid – steam-bath hot and humid, pressure-cooker hot and humid.

Most of us can simply keep the AC cranked for comfort, but have you ever wondered about the poor buggers who do the area’s hottest jobs? And we don’t mean hot, as in “most desirable.”

How about roofers, especially the guys on the roof of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biloxi? Every afternoon last week, a dozen men labored up there with mops, swabbing the roof with 500-degree tar. The temperature most days? About 90, but feeling like 100-plus even without the tar.

How do they do it? “Water, water and more water,” said Patrick Rochon, a supervisor for Mandal’s Inc. Roofing & Sheetmetal Contractors, when asked about the work and this weather. And they try to keep the men supplied with Gatorade, he said.

Want to sweat almost as much as the roofers? Spend the day on the tarmac at Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport. Randy Royster, a station agent for Delta Airlines, “worked the ramp” for 18 years, and he knows how to survive the heat: “You wear a ball cap, and you catch any shade you can,” he said. The ramp guys also drink plenty of iced-down water, carried aboard the little trucks or tugs that load and unload aircraft.

Killer heat dogs sport practice fields this time of year, too, and with high school football practice just days away, we tracked down Casey Wittmann, head coach at St. Stanislaus in Bay St. Louis, to find out how kids and coaches (of sports teams, bands, drill teams) do it.

“We hydrate them really well,” Wittmann said. “We wear hats, and we work only early in the morning and late in the afternoon.”

You won’t find St. Stan coaches and athletes out in the open between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

“The learning curve slows down the hotter it gets,” Wittmann said, “and football is all about learning.”

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