New Orleans...

I spent last Friday and Saturday in New Orleans for a Leadership Conference and was able to go on a tour of areas that were hardest hit by Katrina. It is something you have to see to believe. We got to see where the levee broke, and you can literally see how the water fanned out from the levee and wiped out house after house. Most of the houses near the levee had around 8-10 feet of water come through them. When we first got to this area in the Lower 9th Ward, someone on the bus asked if there used to be houses there, because you couldn't tell that there were until you got closer and could see the foundations. I learned that a lot of the water in these areas sat for at least 6 weeks. When they went in to pull everything out of the houses after the water receded, they had to duct tape the refrigerators shut--otherwise the trucks coming around to pick up debris wouldn't take them because they smelled so bad.