I can't even begin to imagine how bad this stuff smells! I know that stuff in my working fridge can smell pretty bad. I can't imagine all the stuff growing in all that heat!

A putrid task: emptying New Orleans' fridges

By Karen~moderator on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 05:43 pm:

I CAN!!! UGH!!! I know that smell all too well.

By Kernkate on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 05:57 pm:

yucko, don't even want to imagine.

By Feona on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 06:21 pm:

I can't even read it... It will make me puke just reading about it...

By Vicki on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 07:04 pm:

Ugh, I think I would just toss the whole fridge with out even opening it!! Yuck!!

By Cocoabutter on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 07:53 pm:

Oh, gee, where's your sense of adventure?

By Missmudd on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 08:07 pm:

Have an adventurous soul, just not an adventurous nose. YEESH... Definately tape it up and send it away ICK

By Dawnk777 on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 09:14 pm:

I'm all for discarding the whole fridge, altogether! LOL!

By Karen~moderator on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 09:30 pm:

Well.....I cleaned mine out, though I get a hint of *something* when I open the door. The freezer, on the other hand, is trashed. It's on my back patio, waiting for the insurance adjuster to view in a couple of weeks.

Check out this *refrigerator graveyard* - all of these are ruined from the hurricane:

By Dawnk777 on Monday, October 3, 2005 - 09:48 pm:

Ewww. how does your house smell now, Karen?

By Vicki on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 07:13 am:

I was wondering about that Karen. That is another reason I would just pitch the whole thing food and all. I just wonder if you could get ALL of the smell out, or if there would always be that hint of something. I couldn't bring myself to put fresh food into a fridge that had been through weeks of stale, rotten food in it. I would always wonder if I got it clean enough....

By Karen~moderator on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 07:37 am:

Vicki, I don't know, there *might* be - makes sense to think that.

But the thing is, State Farm is apparently not going to cover replacement of refrigerators and freezers *just* for the smell. At least that is what we were told. My fridge is 3 years old! If it were water damaged or electrically fried, they might cover it, but not for the smell. So I have to figure something out. I HAD to get the freezer out of here, it was sickening, there is NO getting that *dead shrimp* smell out of it. I had 10 pounds of jumbo shrimp in there. UGH!

And I still smell a bit of odor when I walk in the house after it's been closed up all day. Maybe when my hand is healed I can try bleaching everything again.

By Momofmax on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 03:09 pm:

My Allstate adjuster told me that they will not replace the refrigerator or freezer because it stinks (mine didn't but he and I were just talking about it when he came to look at my house). They will give policy holders $300 for the contents of ONE, not two (which I would argue about). My parents had their large freezer in the garage with 40 lbs. of peeled shrimp and lots of fish. When they got home the smell knocked you out! They stayed at my house for a week during which time they would go home and try to clean it. When the stuff defrosted a puddle of gook sat on the garage floor until it evaporated - but the smell stayed. They threw the freezer out. Finally, someone told them about an antimicrobial (I think that's what they called it) solution you can buy to get pet stains out of carpet. That worked better than anything else but you can still get a whiff of the stink sometimes. I was lucky, our neighbor had a key to our house and he stayed for the hurricane. He cleaned out our refrigerator and freezer before the food went bad. We told him to just eat what he wanted. We also told him to use our propane bbq grill and the gas for the lawnmower and from our car for his generator. It was nice to have him here because we knew the extent of the damage right after the storm passed and he cut our grass, put the airconditioner on when the power came on, stuff like that. I'll never move, I love my neighbors!

By Dawnk777 on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 03:34 pm:

wow, Momofmax, what a great neighbor!

By Karen~moderator on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 03:42 pm:

Definitely! My neighbor offered to go in and throw my food out the day before we got home, but by then the power had been off for 10 days, and the smell was already in there, and I already knew I had to take photos of the stuff and have a record of what I'd lost, so I told her *thanks, but don't do it*. Besides that, I can't thing of anything worse to do, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

The claims adjuster from State Farm did finally call me a few days ago and will be coming out in a couple weeks or so. He told me to put a $ amount on the lost food. We have a few other things for him to take a look at, including one side of the fence that is blown to an angle now.

I don't blame you for saying you'll never move - there aren't many people who'd look out for your property like that.

By Unschoolmom on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - 07:06 am:

After Hurrican Juan and no power for 4 or 5 days we emptied out our fridge and freezer and yes, it was hard not to throw up. But a good scrub with cleaner then vinegar and baking soda seemed to get most of it out.

But that was only a few days. I can't imagine how you could be expected to keep a fridge after this long.

By Karen~moderator on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - 07:36 am:

Dawn-the first night, we used 3 gallons of vinegar and six boxes of baking soda. The next morning I went through 2 gallons of bleach. NOTHING would take the smell out of the freezer, and I am sure it's because all that stuff melted and oozed into all the cracks and crevices of the freezer. It's a vile smell!

The refrigerator/freezer wasn't nearly as bad, but as I said before, it still has a small odor, though it's nothing like the freezer that had the shrimp and almost all of the meat/chicken in it.

After cleaning all of them, we put boxes of baking soda in them, I tried bowls of ground coffee, bowls of vinegar, bowls of carpet fresh cleaners, cotton balls soaked in vanilla - I think I tried pretty much everything. The upright freezer cannot be salvaged.