When surge comes in it brings in Salt Water. Salt Water just burns the grass and trees to nothing.
Plus all the mud that comes from the ocean.
In Grand Isle, the surge took away many of the camps just like in his picture. It is crazy.
Many people didn't truly see how bad it was in New Orleans because everyone was evacuated. Even afterwards they cleaned up much of the debris. To my knowledge, almost all roads was impassible. If I had to take a guess to what New Orleans went through, I would probably say Cat 2 with Gusts to Cat 3. That is based on all the wind reports I looked at, and video from a friend down the street. Also, a weather station that a guy has behind me which clocked Sustained 102mph with a Gusts to 124mph.
He might have went and put a fan out there to help that gusts out because he also said a Red Fish was swimming down my street.
We did have about 4ft of water in the street but a red fish. Come On!
The awesome power of mother nature. Just one of the hundreds of very sad stories that came out of this season. I sure hope you and your family are able to get back somewhat of what you had before Katrina came. 
