New Orleans pictures, part the sixth

Throughout, I was fascinated by the tagging. What it meant, where the different services placed them, why each was searching. But only after I returned did I look up the codes: "The top obviously represented the date of the search. The left, the unit who conducted it. The right was a code for the type of contamination found within. The bottom number told the grim tale of how many bodies were found." (I don't have the original source of that quote because it's been reposted so often.)



"When they enter a structure to search for survivors, they put a slash on the building (usually in orange spray paint) with the date to the right of it and some type of identification for the search team on the left. Then they "cross the X" on the way out of the structure, writing body counts at the bottom and other hazards to the right. (That way, if they get in trouble and never come back out, another crew can tell which building they're stuck in because the X isn't crossed.)"


And some, more practical, like this one for mail.

Also on the more practical end were those who searched for pets. A good thing in theory, it didn't work out in practice as well. Some of these folks broke into houses to find abandoned pets, and left those houses wide open to be looted.




And then there were signs of a different sort, not encoded, but plain to read. Signs like the one I contributed to Signs of Life and others, begging for an end:


And yet others carrying more hope than despair: