For those of you who are wondering what hurricane recovery might be like for the citizens of New Orleans -- just how bad it might be -- I have given my most serious (truly) thought to re-creating what approximately 800,000 people might be facing in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and the surrounding areas.
So, for a virtual flood and hurricane experience:
Go into your living room. Toss about all your furniture and belongings, as though Godzilla waded through Tokyo, but on a single-household scale.
Bash in your living room windows.
Throw in a few large tree branches along with the neighbor's garbage cans and their barbeque grill.
Add three pounds of sand and one bushel of dead oak leaves.
Add your yarn stash, all of your family photos, Granny's quilts, your wedding dress and anything else you consider irreplacable.
Get a very large plastic garbage can.
Go find someone with an RV, if you don't have one of your own. Empty the septic tank into the garbage can until it is about six inches deep.
To this, add a couple of road-killed animals.
Fill the garbage can with (preferably) brackish water from a nearby marsh or shallow lake close to the sea; if seawater is unavailable, use water from a nearby freshwater pond and add a generous handful of salt. Toss in a couple of dead fish. Do not use tap water.
Add a cup of gasoline, one-quarter-cup of deisel fuel, and one tablespoon each of motor oil, brake fluid and transmission fluid.
Randomly add handfuls of pesticide, fertilizer, ammonia, and other household chemicals, whatever is handy. Add two cups of food garbage. If you have a bit of medical waste handy, add a pinch.
Stir vigorously until well-mixed.
This mixture will approximate the proportions of sewage, lake water, chemicals, and dead human and animal carcasses in the floodwater.
Evenly pour this mixture into your trashed living room, preferably to a depth of about 4 feet, whuch seems to be the average flood level after comparing the lowest and highest flood levels throughout the city. be sure that all of your belongings are thoroughly saturated.
Turn off all utilities, and leave your house and belongings to marinate in this mixture in 90-plus degree weather in 90-plus humidity for one month.
Drain liquid.
Clean it up. Remember to bring a flashlight. Your utilities are still off.
Repeat 799,999 more times.
--Mambocat
This photo was taken in the flood-trashed lobby of the LA-SPCA animal shelter in New Orleans, LA. Copyright (c) 2005 Dez Crawford; all rights reserved
6 comments:
Thanks very, very much for all your efforts with the animals and for making the huge tragedy of the hurricans a reality on the individual basis. The reporters are moving on to other stories but your blog keeps the reality of the individual and what is happening today very much alive.
Hope you are getting the personal support that you require to keep going. My hopes and prayers as a fellow knitter.
First: Dez, I don't believe your blog is getting spammed!
Second: Thank you SO much for taking the time to voice your own perspective about the reality of Louisiana post-K&R. It's too easy for the world to watch on TV, wandering away occasionally to get a snack or drive to the store for another 6-pack. You'd think the world should wobble on its axis from the energy created by every person in the world focussing on the Gulf Coast. Your descriptions and pictures helped me see past the Geraldo's and the talking heads. Thanks again.
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