If you’ve ever had an air filtering machine in your house, you know that even the smallest room can create a lot of dust and dirt. If you forget to clean the filter for a couple of months the results can be shocking and somewhat gross. Now just imagine if you went from, let’s say, 500 square feet to 269,000 square feet. While you’re at it, throw in tens of thousands of people, put a big hole in the ceiling, and have the hurricane of the century going on outside. Of course, I am speaking of the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. The story of the horrors and devastation from Katrina on the Superdome are well documented. However, not as much has been made of the grueling clean-up effort afterwards, which took more than a year to complete and cost over $185 million.
One of the first orders of business was to get all the contaminated air out of the structure. This monumental task was accomplished using massive air remediation equipment that filtered out all the bacteria and sanitized the building in the process.
This is where APC went into action. Relying on our 34 years of filtration and environmental remediation experience, we custom made all the HEPA filters that made this critical job possible. By the end of the process, our custom filters had performed their jobs well, trapping filth and bacteria that would otherwise have made the structure uninhabitable. As is the standard procedure, they were then duly incinerated. It’s the kind of job that even though we wish there hadn’t been a need, we are nonetheless very proud that we could help restore a great venue like the Superdome for the amazing and resilient people of New Orleans.