New Orleans is now the city of the coolers of death: MSNBC
Imagine the horror, multiplying the effects from this thread, and the original, by hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.
Oh, the humanity!
I accompanied my mom back to her house in Metairie (nearest western 'burb of New Orleans aka the non-breached side of the 17th St Canal) on Labor Day after Katrina, for her to retrieve some of her belongings. I, being the ever-dutiful daughter, volunteered to clean out the fridge while she packed. After dry-heaving in the backyard, I had to get some Vapo-Rub to put under my nose like the cops in Silence of the Lambs. I was able to clean it out then, if I didn’t breathe too deeply. It was that bad after only a week. If she hadn’t been able to get in there at that time, we would have definitely had to trash the fridge.
The scary thing is that there is a refrigerator and freezer at my grandmother’s house that no one has gotten to yet. (Her house is in Gentilly.) God knows what those two appliances are plotting together in that empty house.
A friend evacuated Houston during Rita. She still claims to have a funk in her fridge.
I don’t even want to think about it. GAH.
EEgh. Every day brings a fresh horror from the hurricane zone. I don’t have to imagine what those freezers are like. I’m forced to remember cleaning out a lab refrigerator/freezer after the compressor had burned out over the weekend, leaving the fan busily blowing hot air over the freezer contents. Said contents were bags of dissected cow eyeballs. (I said it was a lab, right?) We moved the stuff in the refrigerator section to another refrigerator, and that refrigerator began to stink. Rotten flesh is bad enough in the open, but it seems to take on a special foulness when shut in an airtight box.
Additional: This thread is bringing up a Google ad for “Bush Refrigeration”. No one even mentioned FEMA!
They should bury it, in the gardens.
A hopeful beghining for whenever they plant new roses…
The smell doesn’t get worse with time forever. After a month or so, the smell will decline, as bacterial colonies run out of food (so to speak), and eventually, the rotten mush will start to dry out, more bacteria will die, and the smell will lessen considerably. Not completely, it will certainly still smell, but it will not be as putrid as it was at the zenith of the mold civilizations.
I know. I’ve done some time in the “sanitation engineering” field.
shudder
Everything in our deep freeze had to be thrown out following Rita’s little visit. It actually wasn’t too bad, as we don’t keep meat in it. The fridge freezer keeps the meat, which of course had to be thrown out as well. Holy olfactory assault, Batman!
And guess what I found in the outside trash cans this morning after, for some reason, all the meat and such was kept in them for a week instead of being buried or burned or some more proper method of disposal. C’mon, guess. ::barfy smiley::
Pat Robertson?
Oh, you’re so close.
Many of his teeny tiny crawling relatives!
If you’re not sure if it’s a displaced coffin or a cooler of death, first check for refrigerator magnets.
:: Note to self: amend will to specify refrigerator magnets are placed on coffin. That’ll fool 'em! ::
You know, scout, when I posted that I was thinking what a great tradition it would be to start. People are always so mopy at a funeral. Maybe it would add a little levity to look over at a coffin and see it plastered with refrigerator magnets. Plus, everyone at the funeral could see that you’d travelled a bunch and had a full life.
Also, whoever inherits or has to sell your Cooler of Death isn’t going to want someone else’s magnets all over it. See, it’s a win/win.
Now if I can just find a nice, bronze casket with an ice dispenser.
Or listen for a heartbeat.
Magnets won’t stick to bronze, or brass. You’s have to have it made of some kind of steel, and then paint it a bronze color.
So… has anyone encountered the dread evil yet?
Pshaw!
The apartment building next to our house (you can see it on google earth in its burned out state) sat in partial burned out mode for 6 months before the owners brought in the wrecking crew to demolish whatever didn’t come down in the blaze. The building was unsafe to enter so tenants couldn’t remove anything on the second floor. Eight units up there, all with refridgerators and appliances and cabinets and pantrys. All releasing and sharing their vapid stench with the rest of the neighborhood when the long arm of the back-hoe brought them down to ground level.
Ugh.