I wrote up a summary report on the Katrina trip for work. Contact me if you'd like a copy. If you received it by email from me then you have already seen/read most of what follows (I have made some edits), but I am posting it here just because.
The report pretty much sums things up, mainly from my perspective as a cat risk manager for an insurance/reinsurance company. I have about 200 pictures as well and a couple of movies I took with my camera. I have been working with catastrophe risk for about 20 years. This trip was a whole different deal and a very humbling experience. I am both glad and sorry I went: you can't go home again type of experience.
The people's spirits are strong, but their tools are few. In the cat modeling field Katrina is known as a Super-Cat: and event so profound that it creates effects of it's own. Not necessarily event-related effects, but it causes society to actually operate differently. If you are trying to estimate losses based on damage, you are out of luck. The impact of an event likes this warps rules as much as it warps society.
New Orleans? I don't think it will ever truly recover. Strike that - just leave it that it will never be the city it was. The report has a small section on New Orleans repopulation: not going to happen to 100% in my opinion. One of our party is from New Jersey and he said Newark never recovered from the riots in the 60's; he felt the same way about New Orleans. Here we were, 7 months after the event, and large sections of the city do not have basic services and remain deserted.
The Gulf Coast will probably come back, but it will take a whole lot of money and even more luck. If they get hit with another hurricane this year, which is not at all out of the question, the money could go away and never come back.
But the thing that will stick with me the most is the scale. We drove on and on and the damage went on and on. Like the Grand Canyon: no matter how hard you try to prepare for it, you will not be ready to take it all in. This is the first time I have seen the real impact of an event like this. Your defenses come into play pretty early. Seeing destroyed homes, trashed cars, and personal possessions got to each and every one of us in different ways. I said earlier the peoples' spirits are strong: they will rebuild, even though many of them lost everything. God bless them and watch over them.
So here this is for what it's worth. A life experience for sure. I tell you what: I came home and immediately reviewed all our earthquake planning.
Prodigal Son, The Rolling Stones