Ugh, this is making me horribly depressed that I never got to visit NOLA as it was. It's gone forever now.
This kind of thing hasn't happened in a long long time, a city disappearing due to disaster. Seattle and Chicago were devestated by fire and rebuilt from the ground up. Life returns eventually, but it's a slow and difficult process. And so hard to absorb that it's a city like New Orleans that's been around for so long.