If it’s not one thing it’s another.
There’s a slight plumbing problem at the house two doors down. It looks like the landlord is trying to get it fixed, but the result is a giant hole in the sidewalk full of raw sewage.
Update — Tuesday, April 11th: I called the Sewerage & Water Board, and they sent someone out within a couple hours. I happened to catch him on the street. He confirmed that this was raw sewage and that it was public health hazard, however it’s out of S&WB’s purview since it’s on private property. He suggested I call the city.
Update — Wednesday, April 12th: I called the New Orleans Health Department. They took the address and said they’d send somebody out.
Update — Monday, April 17th: A Sewerage & Water Board emergency response team showed up and started excavating the site in the late afternoon. They kept working until well after dark. I talked with them a bit. They said someone in the house had rammed an iron rod down the cleanout, trying to break up the blockage, and had succeeded in breaking the pipe. Or something like that. They also said the pipe was all clogged up with grease. They left a large hole surrounded by yellow tape with labels like “Safety First” and “Caution.”
Update — Tuesday, April 18th: Some of the same S&WB crew showed up this morning to continue the work they’d started last night.
Update — Wednesday, April 19th: The hole has been filled.
You poor bastard. This makes the trials and tribulations of Roseanne Roseannadanna look trivial…
I’ve said it before and I say it again: you and Xy are brave souls. I don’t think I could handle it. I confess, I’m a coward.
You know in Bloomington last night they showed the two Property is Theft ROX episodes on CATS.. I caught the part of them where you showed houses you considered buying.. I was curious.. how much worse could you have fared.. have you ever been curious to check out what could have been?
Would you say that the earth around you is not ready for planting and growing veggies and the like?
Terri, I have indeed stopped back at some of those “might have beens.” The rental we were living in was badly flooded, a single story house — if we had been there we would have lost all our stuff (instead of half). The house we almost bought seemed to fare just about the same as the house we actually did buy.
Spab, there’s a lot of lead in the soil here, at least in the inner city where we live. I wouldn’t recommend growing any veggies. This is a pre-Katrina problem. But we don’t have any soil to speak of anyway, so all our gardening is in containers.