On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:14:25 -0700 (PDT), Frank Reid
wrote:

I've hooked up with much of what actually lives in the water from sting rays,
alligators, oysterfish, etc., but since Katrina, lots of us down here have
hooked up with what would seem to many to be some pretty strange items (although
it has gotten much better as offshore cleanups have occurred) - slot machines,
houses and parts thereof, cars and parts thereof, clothes, stereos and
electronics (tube TVs float - trust me, I know...) - essentially, if people once
had it within about 2 miles of the shore, there is/was probably at least one of
'em out there...

Saw one show where a salvage guy down there post-Katrina had a bunch
of high-end tv's from a furniture store. They were still in the box,
but had been underwater. He got them for the cost of the pallet wood
(essentially a buck a pallet load). He pulled them from the boxes,
rinsed them in clean water and Bobs-your-uncle, he's got bunches of
48-65" LCD monitors. Granted, no warantee, but hell, for 8 cents a
piece plus labor, you could have one hell of a home theater.
Frank Reid

I won't call "bull****" on the report because anything is possible, but I can
tell you there wasn't much of that type of thing. Aside from the obvious, the
way things got "wet" wouldn't have allowed for much of it - In MS and the
southern parts of LA (where there weren't many pallets of such things), the
water "surge" was too destructive in the majority of places - the TVs would have
been somewhere between Horn Island and the Yucatan. In much of the flooded NO
area, the water sat too long. There were relatively few areas where the water
came and went without causing more than a mere "wetting," and much of that was
residential (such as homes on bayous and rivers, etc.). One thing that did
occur was an untold amount of perfectly serviceable engine-powered equipment was
trashed because either the owners didn't know how to save it or they attempted
to "see if it still works" without properly drying it out (getting water out of
the cylinders, crankcase, etc. and bending rods, etc.).

TC,
R