KenHigg:
Whats the white looking stuff in the water? Debris?
Yes. But since I don't recognize the area, I don't know specifically what kind of debris.
Mrs. Gorilla,
I was wondering also if you had a take on what they are doing to those doctors out there, accusing them of euthanizing patients.
It is hard for us to know for sure exactly who did what to whom. It is quite possible that the doctor in question is blameless but was the highest-profile person on the scene at the time. One of the nurses or orderlies might well have been the culprit who did the dastardly deed. Most of the inventory control processes had gone down the tubes by then. So someone with a little bit of knowledge and no Hippocratic oath for ethical guidelines might have been the real perpetrator.
Since I didn't know what the city looked like from above before Katrina, I don't have that reference point.
You really DO need to see the ground-level pix. Aerial shots don't do justice to the situation.
Remember my comments about a thousand square miles being a square only about 31 2/3 miles on a side? The storm surge on the Gulf coast went 40 miles inland. So every 25 miles of coast is another 1000 square miles of devastation. And property only a short drive from a beach is consider PRIME real estate. The overhead shots show you population density. Do the math.
Yesterday someone from the City of New Orleans permits department put up a map showing the geographic location of every reconstruction permit. Based on the distribution, almost all of the city will experience some return of population. Current estimates suggest about 3/4 of the original population will make it.
Something else came out. The water-carrying infrastructure was so badly damaged that in the now infamous "lower 9th ward", people cannot move back because there is no potable water yet. They have to completely redo the under-street water mains. So many other areas are less damaged that spot repairs are being done first before they tackle the big project. If they ever do.