Cough!

This is down the street from my house:


About a month ago, this house had a crew of Spanish-speaking workers (some but not all are Mexican; I hear a lot of "guey" in the stores and on the bus) tearing off the damaged roof and piling it on the sidewalk like this. Two days later a FEMA contractor team closed off the block, covered their noses and mouths and took away the roof tiles in a closed dumpsster--asbestos tiles. About a month before, a house 1 door down from us had its roof worked on, again by Spanish-speaking workers who worked 10+-hour days every single day of the week, and a day later a FEMA contractor team came by in white suits to take those roof tiles away in a closed dumpster---also asbestos.


This includes none of the roofing but most of the interior of the decrepit house (scary pre-Katrina). The pile has been there for over a week. And the workers that ripped it all out and piled it there haven't been here since. Today, a stench began in the block, either from this pile (rained on daily) or the refrigerators on the curb around the corner. Cough. Cough, cough.