Your Katrina note on your website, which only discusses NOLA, reflects the problem with what many people like yourself see, by watching and reading the media from both the US and the UK; they did not cover the affected coastal areas, only NOLA, which is not on the coast.

NOLA was not the hardest hit area from Katrina; instead it was the three Louisiana parishes of Plaquemines, St Bernard, and SE portion of St Tammany, and three coastal counties of MS: Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson. This 200 miles of coastline which was completely destroyed received little press, and not a single headline, on any national news media, in the days and weeks afterwards. There were many people in these areas who could have been helped in the first three days after the hurricane, had word gotten out via the media about their plight.

There was a great deal of secondary damage in NOLA due to the failures in the canals of the level system. The media did not differentiate between canals and levees, consequently the failures were all perceived by the public to be levee failures. The canals will most definitely have to be redesigned. Most of the failures had areas where the walls lining the sides of the canals completely buckled. The levees of the city did pretty well even being overtopped by some of the high water, with the exception of the levee south of St Bernard on the MS River, which was hit from floodwaters from both sides. The levees just have to be upgraded because they are old, and raised a little to handle higher waters.

NOAA has taken high-resolution photographs of all of the affected areas from Katrina (as it does for every storm). Here is the link so you can see the large area of coastal damage that the media ignored. Start with the SE tip of LA and work your way around to Mobile AL. You'll be very surprised.

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM