New Orleans/ Lower 9th

I was in New Orleans this week for a conference and decided to check out how post Katrina repairs were going. Downtown looks pretty similar to how it looked when I was there pre-Katrina. On the way to the airport, we asked our taxi driver to take us through the lower 9th. On the drive towards the lower 9th you quickly started to see where reconstruction has not occurred. I saw houses, businesses, schools and other buildings that were still boarded up, or in many cases, not even boarded up yet abandoned. Many houses, both inhabited and uninhabited, still have the spray paint on the front doors showing how the search and rescue teams had gone through each house. Unfortunately we did not know the codes as to be able to tell if they found bodies, etc in the buildings.

Arriving in the lower 9th was interesting. Much has been cleared out, but I am not sure if the houses that are completely gone were demolished or if they just were no longer there. We did see some reconstruction, and I believe several were the houses that Brad Pitt help build There were still plenty of empty and abandoned houses.

We also checked out the levee system, looking at the remnants of the old levee and looking at the new levee. The new levee looks much stronger. However, what really amazed me was to see how the lower 9th seemed to be below the river level. The levee is visually "up the hill" from the lower 9th. Now I am not sure if the lower 9th is truly below the river level at this time and if the levee is just built up higher on a hill for added safety. If that is the case, I do wonder if it makes sense to rebuild there at all as clearly it will flood again some day, and from its appearance, pretty easily.