Back to New Orleans, part 2

We drove around the Treme for bit, where the damage was a little water, and a lot of wind. Brent took some footage for his docuementary. What I was most upset by was the silence. I’ve never heard this city so quiet. We were standing on the corner in the same nieghborhood where Liz, Leslie, and I got stuck in last Mardi Gras morning coming back from the R Bar. Then, we were nervous to get blocked in and robbed. Now, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Occasionally a truck would rumble past a couple of blocks away or a helicopter would pass over, but other than that, it was jsut us. Weird.

We got the footage Brent needed and headed out to Mid-City to see his and Paul’s house. We drove down Tulane Ave, past OPP and the courthouse. Still no one to be seen. Eventually we hit Jeff Davis and pulled into their driveway. The rental truck that Brent was using in his job driving Brendon Frasier around was still parked in the driveway, but completely covered in calcification from being underwater. We put on our boots and masks, and prepared for the worst. The watermark was about three feet up the door. Brent had been to the house before, but we still had to kick the door open to get inside.

It wasn’t that bad. Sure, it stunk. There was mold growing all the way up the walls. The furniture was overturned and scattered everywhere. The refridgerator had fallen face down and was blocking the back door. Brent had, on an earlier trip, opened the windows to let some air in, but couldn’t move the refridgerator to get the back door open for a cross- breeze. Upstairs was in good shape, the mold hadn’t made its way there. Closing the doors helped a lot, and it was merely musty, rather than straight-up filthly. The water was running. Undrinkable, but at least we could flush the toilet. David’s room had some water damage on the walls from where the roof leaked, but that was the extent of the damage upstairs. Looking in Jamie’s room, you would think that he just left yesterday.

We began pulling out the rugs and furniture downstairs. I dragged the large living room rug out the front door and it left a slippery, smelly mess like a slug behind me. Brent had brought in the house plants, and they had overturned and were rotting. Removing them did a lot for the smell downstairs. We threw out every piece of furniture with any sort of cloth on it. Paul’s accordian was downstairs and had been completely underwater. He couldn’t bear to open the case, and just tossed it outside. His trunk of personal mementos was also downstairs, and had swollen against its bindings. We couldn’t undo the lock, so I smashed it open with a hammer. It was mildly cathartic to add my own tiny destruction to the mess.

The stuff inside was soaked and covered in mold. He recovered his first baby rattle, a giant plastic diamond ring. We pulled out his journals and sat them outside, in the hopes of being able to recover those as well. As part of my job, I’ve been trained on what to do with wet books, but these journals are in bad shape. The covers were completely moldy. Later, when we got them back to the Westbank, I pulled the covers off and threw them away, and froze the text blocks in the freezer, in the hopes of stopping the mold spread until we had time to dry them out. Of course, I forgot them, and they are still sitting in my mom’s freezer, each in its own little plastic bag. Thawing out in the mail won’t hurt them anymore than they already are, I guess.

We decided we should move the fridge to get to the back door. The kitchen floor was sloppy and slick, and with three of us pushing, the refridgerator moved pretty easily. Unfortunately, when it moved, it released all the water that was inside onto the floor. It smelled terrible. All three of us immediately ran outside for fresh air. Absolutely disgusting. After it aired out a bit, we went back in and got the back door open.

After about an hour and a half, we were completely exhausted. The combination of physical labor, sensory overload, ad emotional response really takes its toll on you quickly. We were soaked head to toe in sweat from the heat. We decided to take a break, smoked a few cigarettes while Brent helped out his neighbor who never left because of his 18 pets. He had charged up his cell phone for him, and brought him food and batteries. We got back in the car and headed back downtown to get our tetanus shots.

To be continued.