An aspect of hurricane aftermath seldom conveyed by television or newspaper is the soul-stopping stench.

Crystal Lauderdale sweeps the carpet to get rid of Katrina’s mud in the rental RV.

It’s everywhere, lurking in the next twist of the breeze. The stink of garbage cooking in the Mississippi heat has begun to fill nearly every storm damaged town. Residents are mostly living outdoors and don’t want to fill their homes with the garbage they create. That leaves barrels in yards and next to buildings spilling over with rotting milk, meat and other foul refuse.
There’s no odor more halting than when victims enter their sloshed homes for the first time. Teary victims sift through debris sustaining themselves on shallow sips of air.
Alan and Janine Neumann fought the urge to vomit as they went through their Long Beach luxury apartment that had a water mark four feet up the wall. The unit was about a quarter mile from the Gulf of Mexico, and now opens to a hurricane-made landfill of trashed apartment buildings.
Hurricane Katrina blew open their doors, filling their unit with swampy sewage, fuel and muck. By Friday, it was 100 degrees of muggy stink. After a hurricane, salty water from storm surge gives everything a stench of urine, particularly soaked clothing, carpet and furniture.
Janine Neumann kicked open the door to a second-bathroom and was overcome with the foul smell of days-old sewage and salty sludge.
She gasped, “It’s like the smell of death.”
On her patio, Neumann lit a cigarette and looked out over the devastation. For the first time, she could see the water from their front door.
“It’s unbelievable,’’ she said.
A friend came by and Neumann wanted to show her the damage inside.
Out of habit, she put out the cigarette before going inside.
“Don’t know why I did that,” she said. “Guess it won’t matter anymore if I smoke in the house. You wouldn’t even notice the smell.”

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EQUIPMENT UPDATE: Our other crew topped my famed RV air conditioning fiasco from a few days ago. As some might recall, photographer Crystal Lauderdale and I nicked a downed power line and mangled the roof-top air conditioner on our rented RV. Just a few hours later, reporter Ben Montgomery finished the job.
Montgomery and photographer Kathy Moore traveled the same offending roadway when Moore reportedly said: “Don’t forget about the power…..”
BOING!!!!
“….line.”
Rest in peace trusty AC unit. The remains were later scattered (by accident, really!) all over a Mississippi highway.
The air conditioner was replaced today in Mobile, Ala.
We plan to push into western Mississippi and Louisiana by tonight.
We hope the AC unit makes it that far.