Fly Heaven

I have strange friends. One of them sent me this story about one of the more gnarly (gnarlier?) aspects of Katrina's (and Rita's) wake.

Across the flood-ravaged city, refrigerators spent a month sitting silent and dark, baking in the 90-degree heat. Now, as homes and restaurants are cleaned out, tens of thousands of appliances are releasing a gag-inducing stench of rancid shrimp, sulfurous eggs, rotting fruit and putrid meat. It is an invisible but unavoidable cloud floating in the breeze, faint on some blocks, so potent on others that passers-by have to cover their mouths. It may be most concentrated in the French Quarter, where truck-size waste containers hold the foul contents of restaurant and hotel refrigerators and freezers.

Read the rest at the risk of the contents in your stomach.

(Thanks to David)

Comments

[Toren]

"Gnarly."

I once accidentally unplugged my chest freezer (filled mostly with lamb, beef, and fish) just before going off to Iceland for three weeks.
When I got back the smell was so bad I had all the windows in the house open even though it was January in Calgary and about -20 degrees out. The freezer was a write-off.

[baldilocks]

Imagine a whole city of that.

(Thanks for the spelling tip.)

[Lizzie]

"Gnarlier" would have been fine too. As long as it was just that and not "more gnarlier".

I am so glad I live in an incredibly boring country, weather-wise. I gagged just reading that story! I hadn't even thought about that aspect of things. Those poor people, having to clear all that up.

[doctorj]

This post has a lot of meaning to me. My 79 year old mom lives in Pass Christian, MS two blocks off the beach. She had evacuated to my house in LA. We were without electricity or phone service after the storm. We listened to WWL radio out of New Orleans so we knew of the terrible conditions in the city but we really couldn't get any information from the MS Gulf Coast. Finally on the evening of the fourth day I got a call through to my sister in CA. She told my mother that there was very little chance that her house survived. My mother was very stong, but the thing that really bothered her was that the refrigerator needed to be cleaned out. We thought that she just didn't comprehend that everything was gone. Later a relative made it into the coast and discovered the house was standing and the refrigerator was opened and cleaned out. This is when we knew that her wonderful neighbor Marion, who had rode the storm out on the coast, was alive. She was the only person that would have done such a thing. Later as people started to return to New Orleans the BIGGEST topic of conversation was how to clean out the refrigerator. (When all else fails you ducktape it closed and put it in the garbage.) It was only then that I realized why my mother was so concerned about that darn refrigerator. LOL!

[moose and squirrel]

"I bet if they buried that stuff
for 300 years it would be a delicacy Like the chinese do with there eggs , I wont be around
but I bet it'll be good ", Bulwinkle " Get a grip moose"
Rocket J.