The Superdoom... way overdue for a good dozing.
On Friday, Thornton led a team of 22 contractors and a handful of Superdome employees on a tour of the facility to assess the damage caused by the hurricane and the storm victims who used the building as a refuge. It was the first time anyone other than Thornton or National Guard troops had been inside the building since Sept. 4.
The group included representatives from several national companies that specialize in environmental disaster abatement and demolition services. They donned gas masks, white jumpsuits and rubber hip boots. Some even rubbed Vick’s Vaporub under their noses to block the stench.
“You been in yet, Tim?” one of the specialists asked Superdome Commission Chairman Tim Coulon as he slipped on his suit and mask. “It’s like asking if you’ve ridden a big ride before. You want to know how scary it is before you get on.”
Inside, the Dome’s 1.8 million square feet looks trashed. Its floors, concourses, ramps, meeting rooms, offices and restrooms are littered with debris and refuse from the evacuees who endured hellish living conditions in the building for as many as five days after the storm.
The floor and Momentum Turf playing field have been transformed into a mushy lake of inch-deep black water. The fetid soup coated a sea of trash and spoiled food. The bathrooms on the 200 level overflow with human feces and urine. In one men’s room, the human waste spilled out of the entrance and into the concourse. Blood stains several walls. Stagnant for days in the still air, the water, spoiled food and human excrement will require decontamination and will be removed by professionals.
“You could put a petri dish in here and just see what grows,” one technician said. “The flies are telling you there’s a biohazard.”
The leftovers run the gamut – from mundane items such as clothes and blankets to the more personal, car keys, wallets, photo albums. One collection includes an organ donor card, a personal identification card, and another card with worn edges showing the picture of the Virgin Mary on one side and text on the other that reads, “I Am A Catholic. In case of accident please notify a priest.”
On the desk in the Dome’s office, ransacked by the people seeking shelter in the building, lay a neatly handwritten note on a small piece of folder notebook paper:
“Search and Rescue Team
Please Get
Old woman and legless old man
@ 2432 Ursalines Ave. (N.O.)”
‘The ultimate test’
Officials said at least 10 to 12 people died in the Dome, including a man who jumped or was pushed 50 feet to his death from one of the pedestrian walkways. A military police officer also was shot in the leg during an assault.
Sgt. Tony Small, a major crimes cold-case investigator for the New Orleans Police Department who was in the unit assigned to the Superdome, said at least four rapes occurred in the Dome, and the victims included a 2-year-old girl.
“That’s not rumors,” Small said. “It was horrendous.’’
It’s not known whether any arrests were made in those crimes.
Thornton slept on a cot in his office for four days behind the security of armed guards. “There were a lot of bad people in there,” he said.
On the suite level, windows were shattered; holes and graffiti marred several walls.
Damage to the luxury boxes varied from suite to suite.
In one, the liquor cabinets had been broken into and the chairs were rearranged but everything else was unharmed. Down the hall, one of the New Orleans Saints’ suites was ransacked. Leather couches were turned over. Holes were punched in the walls and pictures were shattered. A 10-by-18-inch picture of former Saints running back Ricky Williams lay in tatters on a bed of broken glass and splintered wood.
The Dome’s upper levels, which didn’t house storm victims, were in relatively good shape. Water, which seeped through the exposed roof’s sheet metal and seams during the storm, did most of the damage. Hardwood floors were buckled 6 inches high.
On the Dome’s perimeter concourse, knee-high piles of refused ringed the building as workers with shovels and forklifts worked to remove the fly-ridden heaps.
“She’s taken a hit,” Thornton said after striding into the fresh air and daylight. “She’s been given the ultimate test.”
Thornton said the damage was far greater than what the Dome endured in 1998 when 14,000 evacuees looted and trashed the building while taking shelter from Hurricane Georges in 1998.
“It’s a mess,’’ said Brian Messisco, a vice president for LVI Services Inc., an emergency response specialty company from Salisbury, N.C., that oversaw the remediation of the Pentagon and World Trade Center sites after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “It’s going to take a lot of work. But I think it can be done. It’s bad but not as bad as I thought.’’
I'm sure that if Bush had responded more quickly, the savage who was responsible would have had to settle for a 4-year-old.
I can't say I have any problem paying 'prevailing wage' to those who have to clean that up. Even IF they're illegals.
we will all pay to build a new one.
As if peeling back coconut husks were a simple matter....
There’s got to be a big budget film being planned on this by now.
Now there's a Biblical phrase. Yikes, what next... passersby wagging their heads/hands and hissing?
Zephaniah 2:15 This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.
Hmmmmm. State owned facility and they used it for a shelter and were unprepared? It was torn apart in 1998 and they still didn't provide adequate security?
What are they hiding?
Good will come out of this.
Two things, they want to move to San Antonio, TX and the wind did not do the damage, it was the folks housed there.