Old-food stench permeates city

Once, before the floods, the refrigerator held savory breakfasts, midnight leftovers, cold beer. Now it’s a box of horrors.

Across flood-ravaged New Orleans, refrigerators spent a month sitting silent and dark, baking in the 90-degree heat. Now, as homes and restaurants are cleaned out, tens of thousands of appliances are releasing a gag-inducing stench of rancid shrimp, sulfurous eggs, rotting fruit and putrid meat.

It is a cloud in the breeze, faint on some blocks, so potent on others that passers-by have to cover their mouths.

Lujene P. Kidder was determined to clean out her house. She dragged ruined furniture to the curb and salvaged treasured family photos. Her resolve failed when she turned to the kitchen. “I’m not going to touch the refrigerator. Just put it outside,” she said. “Maggots.”