Friday was as fine a spring day as you'd ever want to see. Nashville had a Howard Finster sky, a cool breeze, mockingbirds singing in the cherry trees, dogs cooling their bellies in the grass, and no signs of trouble on the horizon. But as my Aunt Coot would've said about the approaching storm, "It's coming up a cloud."
On Saturday morning, I got up and checked my email, and found messages aplenty on my neighborhood's bulletin board. Most were of the "what do I do now" variety. I answered those questions the best I could.
"No, don't start up your washing machine if it's sitting in two feet of water. Things will get sparky."
"The water coming out of the manholes, that's sewage. There's poop in it, and who knows what else."
"W.W. Grainger has respirators. But if you're over 40, you might smother to death if you put one on your face."
Meanwhile, my dear friend Jean called me from I-65. "I'm going to Kentucky to buy every pump I can find," she said. "Do you want one?"
I looked down into my basement, saw plastic tubs floating, and said, "Yes, please bring me one."
By Saturday evening, Jean and her husband Troy were rushing between East Nashville and West Nashville, lending pumps to folks who had need of a pump. That was just about everybody.
About this time, I started getting messages saying there were snakes swimming in the basement of the Opryland Hotel, and the guitars, amps and cowboy hats of every touring band in town were drowned in an underground storage facility.
Now that the water's receding, let me offer this: In the aftermath of the flood, the mold charlatans will come. They're worse than a plague of frogs and locusts, boils and pestilence. Self-proclaimed mold inspectors will be popping up like Whac-A-Moles. These are the folks who attended mold "schools" that offer courses to people who haven't spent much time in the halls of academe. Home inspectors, bug men and just plain desperate dumbasses picked up the mold baton, hoping to make a quick buck. And they got "certified."
Beware of these Mold Men. They'll try selling you carpet cleaning and duct cleaning. They'll stick tape to your walls in search of "toxic mold." They'll try to scare you with tales of the evil black mold — which is kinda funny, because black mold isn't any more dangerous than other mold.
With precious few exceptions, the mold cleanup business is populated by charlatans. I've seen them. I've met them. I've read their fanciful reports. If you're going to pay a mold guy, insist on seeing his credentials, then check to make sure that he went to a legit school and got legit credit for his learning. Fair warning: You might spend the rest of your life looking for a legitimate mold school or a legitimate mold certification.
Mold problems are pretty simple. Dry out the wet spots, then fix the leak(s) that caused the wet spots. Throw away the wet and moldy things, then put new materials in their place. Beware junk science.
I say don't hire a questionable person, company or franchisee for mold remediation and the like. Dealing with a big mold problem is a job for educated folk such as industrial hygienists and highly skilled tradesfolk.
I have no dog in the hunt, but if I were worried about mold or other problems at my house, I'd call Environmental Management and Engineering (EME) at 742-0875. Last time I checked, they had the right sorts of folks to do the work.
Here are some cleanup tips from Quintin MacDonald and David Isenberg at EME:
- Wear rubber boots and gloves when you're cleaning up.
- Keep your hands away from your mouth.
- A mix of 10 percent chlorine and 90 percent water is good for cleanup.
- Wear a respirator suitable for the job at hand; for instance, a respirator that will filter out bacteria and/or chlorine bleach.
- When you're finished sweeping and/or mopping, throw out the brooms and mops.
- You can use a product such as Peel Away™ paint stripper to remove mold on painted surfaces.
- Know the difference between blackwater (sewage) and greywater (water that contains ingredients other than sewage).
- Discard wet/moldy drywall and insulation, as well as wet rugs, wet carpet pads, wet stuffed animals, bedclothes and such.
- Assume that things that got wet in the flood are contaminated. Typical contaminants include sewage, gasoline, oil, fertilizer and who knows what else.
- If you have a ground cover such as polyethylene sheeting in your crawl space, remove it so the ground can dry out.
