Digging Through the Muck

Digging Through the Muck. . , The rising water brought crisis. It left behand devastation. , As residents returned to their homes, they found what no television or newspaper could fully capture. Water and mud had seeped onto everything. Garbage was everywhere. The smells were overpowering. Waiting for inspectors, calling insurance companies, and standing in lines consumed whole days. Everyone went to work, hauling, carting, disinfecting. Finally, the last inches of water were pumped from basements and the first muddy boot prints reached the bottom of the stairs., Residents and volunteers, wearing rubber boots and gloves and garbage bag aprons, gutted the basements and main floors of houses, lugging everything from waterlogged carpet and freezers to stuffed animals and wedding pictures to the curbside. Miles of city berms were piled ten feet high with debris. The stuff of lifetimes was reduced to 60,000 tons of garbage destined for the landfill. People turned to each other for strength and support.