The N.O. people have no idea of the mold, the melted contents of freezers, the total destruction of flood waters. I just went through two, back to back, September 2004, Vero Beach FL

Yes, and this will be worse. Weeks or months under water. I'd guess most buildings will have to be stripped down to the bare studs and almost built over.

You're assuming the studs are salvageable. Right now, New Orleans is semi-tidal, and decades'-if-not-centuries'-old walls aren't made to take that kind of lateral stress. There is no "almost" in that built-over phrase.

Aside, of course, from the fact that the water is growing daily more toxic, biologically and chemically. You don't want that legacy in your walls anyway. New Orleans, in its current form, is physically gone.

(P.S. That may sound overly pessimistic, but I'm a long-view person. I think it's better for all involved to make as clean a sweep as they can— to grieve for their losses and then decide what they want to do. Maybe they can use the insurance money to rebuild and get the house of their dreams rather than the make do. Maybe they'll move somewhere else. But I think a total loss is, in many ways, kinder than an almost-lost because then there is nothing to tie you to a depressing eternal fix that never quite makes it as good as the original.)

(Hmm. This may explain why I never went for the "battered antique" look, but instead for the strip-and-refurnish model.)

John, all the below sea-level parts of the city (which means most residential districts) will have to be bulldozed, once the waters are pumped out. There's no alternative. Those structures will be utterly degraded and contaminated.