signifiers

there are signs like these on every house that was affected by the flooding. you can't see it very well in this image, but on most houses there is a large spray painted 'X' containing info about the damage...the number in the top portion of the 'X' is the date the house was searched; the number to the left is the army, national guard or fire department division that searched it; the bottom number signifies the number of dead bodies found in the building; the letters on the right hand sign usually say something like 'NE' or 'TFW'---what we think means 'No entry' and 'toxic flood waters'---though all of these places were innundated with the latter, so i'm not sure why making this distinction matters. i saw a guy in a coffee shop who had gotten the 'X' with the info from his local collective space, the iron rail, tatooed on his arm. what a place. it's eerie to drive through the city and see places where people died. the city estimates that there are thousands more bodies throughout the city. 3,700 people are unaccounted for. many people i know think most of these bodies will be found (or not) amid the atomic-bomb scale rubble that is the lower ninth ward.