I had less than 24 hours notice that I would be going down to New Orleans to demonstrate our new ECG management system at a huge cardiology trade show, and I would be staying for 6 days, but I knew it was a great opportunity for me so there was no way I was saying I wouldn't go! New Orleans was not a place I would ever have picked to go, but now I can at least say that I've been there. I wouldn't want to go there again. The city is rich in history and some of the architecture is very cool, but it is not very nice, and that has nothing to do with Katrina. I walked down Bourbon Street a couple of times and saw the balcony people throwing the necklaces and the wild people in the streets, but everything smelled like urine and vomit and vodka. People don't just drink to have a good time, they drink to get obliterated. The music was very loud and the bars were very smokey...all things I really don't care for. The food at the nicer restaurants, though, was FANTASTIC.

The French Quarter where I was staying did not have any flood damage and very little wind damage (and that was repaired quickly). However, the city is not considered very safe and it is quite a bit worse since Katrina. I saw one 20 year-old kid covered in blood and a huge gash in the back of his head (and nobody batted an eye as he walked by), and there were 4 murders that took place during the time I was there. I was not allowed to walk ANYWHERE without somebody with me.

The last day of the trade show was a half-day so I took a 3-hour van tour of the city and the Katrina damage (yes, a “three-hour tour!”). It was very sobering. It's been a year and a half since the storm, and most of the houses in the neighborhoods outside of the city are empty. Completely gutted. There were also a lot of foundation slabs that were empty because the water picked the houses up and carried them away. Some of the houses had clear watermarks on them that were pretty high. The water was at that level for 2 and a half weeks. In the ninth ward, the houses didn't have watermarks because they were completely submerged. The grocery stores, doctor's offices, gas stations, etc. are all abandoned. There is some reconstruction, but for the most part there are just miles of empty houses.

There were X's on all the houses that indicated that the house had been searched by a National Guard troop. A number below the X was the number of bodies that were found in the house. Thankfully, I only saw one X with a number other than 0. The tour guide said that was because most people died in the water, not in their houses. Some of the X's had notes like "Dog Inside" or "Dead Dog". That was very sad. The tour guide said that the city's population is half of what it was pre-Katrina and that 1300 people died. He conceded, however, that Mississippi had it worst.

Most of the damaged houses were owned by the occupants, but these people do not have any money and can not afford mortgages. The houses were handed down from one generation to another. That is why so few had insurance or can afford to rebuild. The people that can afford to rebuild are looking at having to rebuild from scratch. Although the exteriors aren’t so bad on most of the houses, everything has to be removed and rebuilt. The sheet rock, the wiring, the plumbing, etc. all has to be redone, and everything has to be treated for mold. Even if they were to rebuild, the schools are closed, there is no postal service, no police, and no grocery stores near by. They would be living in a ghost town.

The natives are very angry and bitter towards the government. When he showed us what a levy (that had breached and caused all the damage) was, I was stunned. It's just a very thin cement wall. It did not look very strong. He said they just toppled over like nothing and that the Army Corps of Engineers had assured them that they would hold and that they didn't need flood insurance. The ACOE were still there re-building them and they looked pretty much exactly the same as the old ones. As the tour guide said, they survived the hurricane; they just didn’t survive the engineering.

Spending all day in the convention center for 4 days was a little odd too. Looking around at the trade show booths of some of the very large medical companies (GE, Seimens, Philips), and thinking about the cost of those booths, was very sickening knowing that so many people were stuck in that very building in appalling conditions and many people died right there.

You probably won't be shocked by any single photo, but just knowing that it has been a year and a half and not much has been done, and that there were 1000s of other houses that I didn’t take shots of because they all just looked the same, and it will probably have some impact on you. My photos only show the tip of the iceberg.