NEW ORLEANS -- A freakish invader from the Far East is eating this city known for its beignets, crawfish etouffe, jambalaya and oyster poboys.

	Scott Bauer/U.S. Department of Agriculture
	Formosan subterranean termites.

Formosan termites, tiny, blind bugs no bigger than ants but with the appetite of Mothra and the destructive power of Godzilla, have infested every city neighborhood and are devouring wooden buildings, homes, bridges, caskets and trees. Even creosote-soaked telephone poles are being consumed from bottom to top and from inside out.

The termites do such a fast and thorough job of gutting wood support beams that houses sometimes collapse without warning.

Over the past 15 years they have easily destroyed more of the Big Easy than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined.

The dinner bill for this movable feast of wood is $3 billion and growing. And authorities warn that the insects are expanding their range in the United States, moving as far north as North Carolina to date.

In the French Quarter, the cultural heart of a city as much covered by charm as its stately live oaks are by Spanish moss, the voracious termites have eaten through the roof of a police station just off Bourbon Street. They've also shredded the joists under the second floor of The Cabildo, the 1795 building where the Louisiana Purchase was signed.

Matt Messenger of the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board said the quarter is a magnet for the termites.

"The French Quarter is a termite nightmare," Messenger said, "with its dense wooden construction, common-walled buildings, leaky roofs and moisture retaining brickwork and no open ground.''

In the home of James Cahn, built around a lush courtyard on Barracks Street in 1850, the battle is constant, as it is in almost all the old French Quarter buildings. He's had to replace the roof three times since he bought his home in 1979. For eight years, one interior wall has been ripped out to expose the wooden joists for treatments to get the termites out. In the courtyard, a big magnolia tree with a trunk diameter of more than six feet has been infested and treated with pesticides four times.

"We found six termite nests when we renovated the house and places where they've eaten all of the two-by-fours,'' Cahn said. "In the living room there are holes above the window where they've eaten through the plaster.

"We've seen places where they've eaten through tin to get at the wood.''

All the way from China

The Formosan termite, a whitish-to-yellowish bug about a quarter-inch long, is a long-time world traveler. It was identified as a distinct species and named in 1909 on the island now called Taiwan, but is a native of southern mainland China.

The bugs arrived in Formosa and coastal Japan with traders in the 1500s. By the mid-1800s they were in the Hawaiian Islands. Scientists say they hitchhiked to New Orleans and several other southern port towns late in World War II or immediately after the war, most likely in scrap wood aboard military cargo ships. Most of the initial infestations were in and around naval stations along the Mississippi River.

Similar in appearance to the seven native termite species that are present in New Orleans, the Formosan's natural disguise allowed it to extensively colonize the area for more than two decades without being identified.

A web of foreign termite colonies containing billions of the termites is now well established and extends for hundreds of square miles under the city and beyond. In 1992, when Hurricane Andrew dealt the city a glancing blow, 60 percent of the downed trees contained Formosan termites.

They have become so prevalent that the mating swarms that fly out of their nests each spring have been dubbed "New Orleans snowstorms.'' Sometimes the clouds of bugs are so thick they have stopped Little League baseball games.

"The population of Formosan termites has just been expanding over the last decade,'' Messenger said. "And once they get established they're there to stay.''

While their appearance is similar to other termites, what sets Formosans apart is their appetite. They eat wood about nine times faster than their American subterranean cousins and grow the largest colonies of any of the 2,400 known termite species -- typically from 1 million to 10 million bugs.

New Orleans is not the only city to feel the bugs' mandibles. Formosan termites are entrenched in Hawaii, are attacking California and have chewed their way across the South.

Helped by central heating, dense urbanization and changing climate, the adaptive, persistent and hugely hungry bugs may eventually find their way into the Northeast, and add the region to their list of conquests.

All out war

After decades of token resistance, New Orleans is making a stand against the Formosans in the fabled French Quarter, under the streets and sidewalks where raucous revelers drink beer, flash breasts for strings of plastic beads tossed from balconies and visit the birthplace of jazz.

Operation Full Stop, a $5 million federally funded program, has replaced the ineffective, individual efforts in local government offices, homes, restaurants and bars with a coordinated offensive that has shown some signs of success. The outcome will be closely watched by other neighborhoods and other cities where the Formosans have a toehold.

Established in 1998, the program coordinates termite suppression efforts in a 16-square-block area of the French Quarter, where steel and brass bait stations spaced at regular intervals have been drilled into the sidewalks and streets. The bait stations house liquid termicides and traps.

City and state agency employees, working under the curious eyes of French Quarter visitors, regularly pry off the circular steel caps embedded in the streets and sidewalks to check and replenish the stations.

"This is the world's most interesting termite laboratory, a fun place to have to do this kind of work,'' Messenger said during a tour of bait stations along Bourbon and Royal streets.

As a result, Formosan termite numbers, which had increased 30-fold in the decade before the program started, have declined over the past three years.

"There's now about half the number of Formosan termites inside the treated area of the French Quarter as there are outside that area,'' Messenger said. "Louis Armstrong Park is the most termite free area of the city right now, but that's today. They have a way of coming back, so we'll have to see.''