...same local insurance agent’s magnetized calendar. “Oh, lovely,” Probyn said, grabbing a panda bear magnet from a nearby fridge for his collection. “I had a Ford F150 truck with about 40 pounds of refrigerator magnets on it.” He removed them all and put them in a sack before returning the (yuck) rental. “I bet I’ve got about 200 pounds of refrigerator magnets,” Probyn said. “For a guy like me, this is like heaven. There’s a nice size refrigerator over there we can pop open.”

Related Links: Mission Incredible: Clean Up, Then Tear Down New Orleans, February 20, 2006 "White Goods" Operation Includes Freon Recovery and Fridge Gutting, February 20, 2006

Under the close scrutiny of bluebottle flies, vigilant seagulls and less-extroverted scavengers, workers donned in the latest hazmat attire spread a huge sheet of plastic before a row of refrigerators and prepared for a gutting. Fridge gutting is the appropriately graphic term for removing the contents of refrigerators, most of which have been harboring their fermenting, festering innards since residents evacuated at the end of August.

Confronting such olfactory evidence, most folks would find their nose hairs curling and fight off a gag reflex. Not Probyn. He takes a deep breath of satisfaction in what he thinks is the most enjoyable aspect of the debris removal mission. “I thought my sense of smell would be ruined, but it’s actually gotten better,” he said. “I just lucked out and got here.”

Working in white goods has given Probyn a lot of practical, consumer insight – like which refrigerators and pots and pans hold up better. “See, the maggots only got this far,” he said, pointing to one Subzero (brand name) refrigerator. “There is nothing on the inside of the refrigerator.”

During the gutting process, Probyn has discovered Polish vodka, plastic-enclosed popsicles and a three-foot bottle of Perrier Jouet champagne. Probably the most interesting thing he has found is pornographic material–magazines, not videos, in the freezer, not the fridge. “It’s crazy is how much pornography you find in the freezer,” he said. “It’s usually in the top freezers, perhaps to keep it away from husbands who don’t go in the freezer?”

Heinold recalls the power of rotting meat.

Even on the hottest, muggiest day, the aroma in the white goods section of the Old Gentilly Landfill “smells like perfume compared to the spoiled meat mission,” said Tom Heinold, a project engineer. “It was gut wrenching,” he said of the mission to clean out meat packing houses and New Orleans Cold Storage, Inc., which was home to tons of frozen chicken. “We had to load ‘em on bobcats with respirators, line the whole trailer with plastic, load the meat, and make sure we didn’t puncture the plastic so nothing would leak out.”

In November and December, crews removed 602.57 tons of spoiled meat. “Man did that stink,” Heinold said. “I’ve never smelled anything so powerful in my whole life, but it had to be done.”

Rather than an expected transformation to vegetarianism, Heinold still prefers his meat rare. “Just don’t leave it rare in the refrigerator for a couple months with the power out,” he said.

Although Heinold normally handles navigation and flood control projects, most recently from his home base in Davenport, Iowa, he volunteered to come to New Orleans in November because he wanted to make a difference. “It’s quite a challenge because this is a service, not construction,” he said. “If there weren’t somebody here to clean up, the citizens of New Orleans would be in a world of hurt.”

In his designated sector alone, an area that includes about half of New Orleans, Heinold said they have been removing about 1,500 units a day for three months. There was a spike in curbside white goods over Christmas vacation and Heinold expects to see another over the summer when kids get out of school and people come home to clean their houses out. “This entire debris mission is largely driven by repopulation,” he said. “We are not going on private property to retrieve refrigerators. We depend upon people to come home and clean their houses out.”

Inspectors looked on while operators used a huge claw to individually remove white goods from an incoming truckload. Each piece is carefully handled until the Freon is removed Heinold said. “We want to handle them as few times as possible until the EPA comes to get the Freon. After that, we can dump them over and do whatever we want.”

Probyn rubs his hands together and smiles in anticipation of another gutting. “It’s not exactly mundane, is it?”

(Photos by Angelle Bergeron)