There was a time when I wasn’t privy to the smell of a rotten refrigerator or moldy upholstery.
I smelled my fair share of thm in the months after Katrina but it wasn’t the first time. While around these parts many consider Hurricane Ivan ‘the one that missed us,’ I unfortunately can’t make that claim. Ivan made landfall right around Orange Beach, Alabama at Florida / Alabama line on Sept. 16 and brought with it a 20 foot storm surge that wiped out the neighborhood I grew up in and destroyed my parents’ house. I didn’t have a blog then so I submitted a story about the experience of helping them gut our home to the local paper.
My mother called me Saturday Sept. 18, in New Orleans to tell me the house in Grande Lagoon that I grew up in was virtually destroyed. It was still standing, she said, but the walls were knocked out and the floor was covered with mud, debris and dead fish. There was a house in the backyard and a house in the front..
The following Wednesday, Sept. 22, I was finally able to slip away from my responsibilities to lend my parents a helping hand and see for myself what they and the people on the News-Journal forums had been describing for the last few days.
Coming back to the mostly-destroyed house I grew up in was mind-numbing. Anything under the six-foot watermark was soaked in a combination of mud and salt water and ruined, from the most insignificant matchbooks to family heirlooms. The drywalls in the house were filled with water and one could poke their finger through them easily. The paint was coming off the walls in strips. Any container that was left upright had muddy brackish water in it. Sinks, the bath tubs, change jars, coffee cups that were left out in the haste of evacuation, they all held the remnants of Ivan’s storm surge.
Beyond the emotions I was dealing with in my parent’s house, there was also the sadness when framed pictures of neighbors I had never met were sitting in the grass or on the top of debris piles. A few times, families from three streets came by to sift through debris and they often found plaques, photos or other items.
The smell of the area was intense. The most prevalent odor was that of silt, sand and sludge that had previously rested at the bottom of the Intracoastal and was now scattered all over Grande Lagoon. The microscopic remnants of small sea life creates a very strong, earthy odor that can’t be ignored.
There was also the smell of rotting food inside destroyed refrigerators. One could always tell when someone on the block opened a refrigerator because the smell spread out for what seemed like 50 yards in all directions. It reeked of putrid food mixed with salt water. There were patches of this rotten aroma all over Grande Lagoon.
It was surprising how much plant life Ivan was able to destroy. Not only were the neighborhoods many pine trees taken down, but it seemed like the salinity of the sea water did its best to kill many of the shrubs and bushes as well.
Frequently, the sound of hovering sheriff’s department and media helicopters would circle the neighborhood like voyeurs. My mother said they have taken quite a few photos of the house remnants in our pool. All eyes were on Grande Lagoon it seemed. We were national news.
I took a drive around the neighborhood to check on friends and everywhere there were destroyed houses. Many homes were washed away completely. There are 10 or more homes that are now just foundations or stilts. A dozen or so more are virtually destroyed. They won’t be restored. Many of these homes are friends of mine’s houses where I spent my formative years.
The main drag of the neighborhood, Grande Lagoon Boulevard, looked like a bombed airstrip. Everywhere there were piles of yard and house debris. People were mostly in surprisingly good spirits. They are probably simply tired of being distraught and ready to move forward.
By the time I got back to my parents’ house, they were ready to return to the house they rented in Lillian, AL. My brother and I stayed and finished clearing out the house. We were throwing away more than we were salvaging.
It was a surreal thing to help clear out junk that used to be my parent’s possessions. It was unfathomable to look around the house I grew up in and see a six foot high water mark on the wall that made the family room resemble a dirty bathtub. It would be easy to think that what I was going through was a very personal and private matter; until I looked around and realized it was happening all around me.