So sore; so tired. 4 hours on the roof wrestling 400 sq foot tarpaulins. A slippery,powdery, crumbling asbestos tile roof.

Rita had to have torn up my pathetic temporary patches. Of course, no word from the roofer, so no chance that he had replaced them with real patches. & of course, the city is officially closed, so you can't apply for "Blue Roof" from FEMA, since the only way to apply is to appear in person at one of the 2 locations, both of which are inside New Orleans, which is officially closed. (Isn't that so FEMA?)

So, back to New Orleans, with Christopher & Bertrand this time, so they could provide support while I worked on the roof and clean out some of the tiles & tree limbs cluttering up the yard.

Fortunately, it didn't seem as bad as expected. The only area inside the house that took additional water was Christopher's room, where I hadn't been able to patch last time, anyway.

I added a tarp to cover the center of the house on the bedroom side, and covered the mismash of tarps on the other side with a single large tarp. In the process ripping off the damaged ridge vent and several vent pipes, allowing the tarps to lie flat. Although the south edge of the largest tarp over our closet & bathroom had pulled loose, I was able to nail it back down. Hopefully we are through with hurricanes in the New Orleans for the season & this time the tarps will last.


We also dumped some chlorine in the pool, which changed the water from black to a lighter shade of green. Still not swimmable, but an improvement.




The office is really in much worse shape than the house, thanks to the pecan tree. The trunk is now gone, allowing me to see what a total destruction job it did to my fence -- that is what a job the tree company did to the fence when they placed the trunk on top, after removing it from my office. The fence was undamaged two weeks ago while the tree was still in the building. And of course, laying it on the fence meant that they also crushed the hedge & the tree next to the fence, so they kindly removed them, too.

The trash visible right at the bottom of the picture is the gutter and downspout knocked off the side of the building when they dropped the tree trunk. Thanks, guys.


After getting the remaining tree limbs out of the yard & off the roof of the office we patched a 2 ft square hole in the office roof, and then replaced the patchwork tarp in the photo below with a single 20ft x 20ft tarp, which should keep any more water from entering the office. Sorry, no picture of the final product. Just too tired to even think of taking one.

I think I might take next weekend off & not go into the city. After all, I've got a lot more Rita cleanup to do in Zachary.