Day 14 Late PM Update: Chemicals, Getting Into Uptown, Katrina In The Economist

Chemicals In Floodwater: Lead, sewage treatment plant chemicals and car and lawn runoff are some of the main contaminants of NO’s floodwater, never mind the E. coli. Once the water is cleaned, however, the long-term deleterious effects will not be on humans, but on lawns. Hey, America needs some priorities.

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Entry Into Uptown: Post 676 from the nola.com Uptown forums reads, “Drove down to New Orleans arriving around 600A from Jackson Ms. Allowed thru 3 checkpoints telling guards and police I was going in to retrieve my daughter’s belongings from her apt who was a Law student at Tulane. Ended up on Airline Drive, cut across Jefferson Hwy, around River Road to Oak street. I was at the apt about five hours and guards and police coming by constantly asking what I was doing and when I was leaving. Worst problem was rotted food in the refrig and getting that cleaned out. Apt located about a 1/2 mi from Tulane had no water damage, in fact still had running water with a couple of people living in the neighborhood with generators. Police were marking houses that they had checked with stray paint to indicate no one there.”

Can’t wait to find out if the police marked my house or the plywood boards with that awful orange. Small price to pay for safety, I suppose. Also, shivers run down my spine on thinking about the ecosystem that lives and thrives in my refrigerator. Cleaning that up should be an exercise in rapture. Again, if the refrigerator is all this debacle takes from my place, so be it.

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Well Worth A Read: The September 3 print issue of The Economist carries an eloquent and synoptic essay on the defensive, environmental, political and economic implications of Katrina and future Category 4-5s for our area. Oddly enough, the article doesn’t blame global warming for the hurricane as does this Boston Globe opinion.