About a month after the brown waters of Lake Pontchartrain breached the levees and inundated New Orleans, I found myself listening to a long discussion on NPR about the plight of the Formosan termite. This is a terrible bug, capable of eating its way not only through wood, as one expects of its kind, but also, an on-air entomologist informed us in the direst tones, vinyl siding, lead sheets, concrete, and copper--in short, not just the cellulose bones and skin but everything that makes up a home. Before Hurricane Katrina this creature had been eating New Orleans. The termite smuggled its way back from Asia in palettes as the military infrastructure of the Second World War was dismantled, and like the plagues of gypsy moth caterpillars in the Northeast and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, it ran amok in its new ecology. The storm was a reprieve; the entomologist, citing his research, noted that the population would be much reduced: Formosan termite colonies can't survive more than a few weeks underwater.

By that point the Katrina coverage was clearly ebbing with the flood waters. The damage from the storm had been described by panicked pols as worse than September 11 and Hiroshima, an "American Pompeii," and with infamous overstatement by the mayor of Biloxi, "our tsunami." Unwatchable images of government neglect and tales of official malfeasance were everywhere. Who could begrudge the radio pundits and producers their attempt to find a silver lining? New Orleans had ceased to be...but the termites were dead! It was a classic example of late-cycle media overreach; with the flood and the reaction to it dominating the news for a month, all other tales had been told. A city had been submerged, its people had been scattered, its buildings and infrastructure were at that point defunct. Cue the bug guys. And we still hadn't heard from the architects.
metropolis mag
- bill 12-12-2005 7:15 pm




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