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The head guy of Plaquemine Parish was interviewed a week after Katrina hit and said the damage to so much housing was so great that he figured half of the housing in the southern half of the parish was either so ruined by the winds or the flooding that there was nothing to be done but bulldoze it.
A lot of the Ninth Ward was in/under 10-16 feet(!) of water for weeks. Never mind the wallpaper, it warps all the semi-dried out structural wood and splays all the plywood and pressboard and does a great number on gypsum walling. Then there's all the fungus and metal joints that rust out, the door and window frames that warp beyond hope, the rotting filling materials in the walls (if any), residual asbestos sheathings, rusted up heating and water pipings, the electrical wiring that has to be done over entirely to be safe.
I've lived in southern Californian wildfire country. There are three or four standard things that are really hard or impossible to replace. These are jewelry, financial and very personal written documents (letters, diaries, certificates, diplomas), and photo albums. Almost everything else turns out to be Just Stuff.
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