My father and I went to New Orleans yesterday for the first time since Katrina. Apologies for the relatively poor photos; the only digital camera I had wasn't great.
Main door to the carriagehouse: wide, narrow, side view, after a good sweep.
This looks far worse than it actually is. The leftmost tree is standing, and held up the middle tree. The rightmost tree fell at an angle, and missed the house itself.
There was no real damage to my house. One of the skylights had a very slow leak, which dripped a very little bit of dirt onto the sofa (a futon whose cover can be taken off and washed: wide view, close view.).
The oak tree across the street from my house. Entergy has already started clearing off any tree branches leaning on power wires.
From the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Peniston Street: towards downtown along St. Charles, towards uptown along St. Charles, towards the lake along Peniston.
At Prytania at Peniston Streets, looking uptown.
At the corner of Pitt and Peniston Streets, someone (probable hospital staff) left a bag of food for abandoned pets.
A tree down on Prytania, in between Amelia and Peniston Streets. My back was to the garage entrance to the St. Charles Hospital; the Clinic for Women's Total Health is the building to the right (and that's their sign under the tree).
The Bluebird Cafe has damage to their sign, but the inside looks OK.
Rayne Methodist, on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and General Taylor Street, lost their steeple: left, right.
One of the streetcar's power poles in front of the church was damaged. The worst streetcar line damage I saw was approaching and around Lee Circle; most of those lines are either dangling low or are on the ground. The lines and tracks from the LGD to Bouligny (that's as far Uptown as we went) seem intact.
On the way out we saw that the Coliseum Theatre had lost its façade.
These photos don't really reflect how much damage there actually is, even Uptown. Most stores have lost their signs; Magazine Street has torn-up bits of sign, glass and plastic up everywhere, and the CBD is worse: most of the buildings have temorary fencing around the front because of how much debris is there, or because the façades are unstable. Lots of power lines are down, and few traffic light work. Every few blocks there's a building that just collapsed, and most blocks have at least a couple of places with noticible if not major damage.
The city issued a zip-code-by-zip-code progress report on the restoration of services today.