Behind the Scenes at
Mardi Gras
(This column was first published in
the February 23, 2004 issue of The Buffalo News.)
Tomorrow is Mardi Gras, literally Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras is
one of those quasi-religious holidays like Halloween. In New Orleans it is a
party day of feasts, parades and costumes that end at midnight when the
Catholic season of Lent begins.
What visiting celebrants don't realize is that behind the
sounds of the horns and shouting of the hedonistic celebration there is an
indistinct crunching sound. The city of New Orleans is literally being torn
apart from within.
It comes as little comfort for us Amherst homeowners beset
with sinking houses to learn that in New Orleans conditions are even worse. But
they are indeed.
A front page
picture in the New Orleans Times-Picayune recently showed one house, its
walls canted outward at about twenty degrees, its roof peak open about two
feet, the living room exposed through foot-wide cracks and, despite some
propping beams, the entire residence simply falling apart. What was once a
lovely home is, of course, worthless.
And the cause? The city is being devoured from within by
Formosan termites.
The collapsing homes and falling trees sound like part of a
science fiction movie and indeed one writer has described the termites as
having "the appetite of Mothra and the destructive power of
Godzilla." Sadly in this case, however, the story is true. The damage to
the French Quarter alone has been estimated at more than $300 million a year;
nationally the termites cost us over a billion dollars annually.
And all this destruction is done by tiny insects the size of
ants.
Tiny, yes, but an average colony has five million of them.
The total number of these terrible gnawers just in New Orleans is well up in
the billions and now they have spread widely in the South. They have long been
a problem in Hawaii and are beginning to chew up California.
Formosan termites' basic food is wood and they have eaten,
according to writer John McQuaid, "live trees, ornamental sugar cane,
caskets, creosote-treated utility poles, wooden bridges, railroad ties, wharves
and pilings under buildings," but their diet has also included,
"concrete electrical vaults, traffic control switch boxes, the seals on
high-pressure water lines, foam and fiberglass insulation, lime brick mortar,
caulk, felt paper, roofing material, lead, copper, books, paintings, furniture
and plastic pool liners."
McQuaid also tells how they chewed through plastic, rubber
and lead to get to the paper lining around 24,000 volt transmission lines under
the New Orleans business district. Water then reached the exposed lines causing
explosions and power outages.
Formosan termites were probably brought to this country from
Asia during World War II in wood carried by military cargo ships. They were
seldom noticed until Hurricane Andrew knocked down thousands of New Orleans'
beautiful live oaks in 1992. Workers clearing the trees discovered two-thirds
infested with termites. By then, however, the termites had already spread to
man-made structures.
In 1998 the federal government entered the battle with,
adopting military jargon, a program termed Operation Full Stop. Thermal imaging
and acoustic devices detect termites deep in normal appearing wood and new
pesticides are then applied. One fungus developed by microbiologist Mark
Jackson, has proved especially effective.
Battles are finally being won against the masses of invaders
but for many home and business property owners those wins come too late. In too
many cases their buildings are valueless. Schools especially have suffered.
Formosan termites are normally restricted to areas of warm
climate. Entomologists worry, however, that our heated houses may encourage
these terrible insects to venture farther north to join our carpenter ants.
Let's hope not.-- Gerry Rising