We scraped, sanded and painted the inside of the building, helping firefighters whose "station" has been a trailer since August, 2005. Many of them have been living in trailers, too, since their homes were destroyed. The police station is still a trailer, too. This is only the twelfth (12^th) of New Orleans' twenty-five (25) fire stations to be repaired. Half of the city's stations are still unusable.

The firefighter in this picture (left) shows how high the flood waters rose outside the firehouse. Inside, the water was eighteen inches (45 cm) deep - for days.

Station Chief Tim McConnell, like everyone I met, was effusively grateful. "It may have only seemed like a quick day for ya'll, but getting the stations done and reoccupied goes much farther by decreasing the mental stress and increasing the moral of the members," he wrote by email.

Driving through the neighborhood, you feel viscerally that the human impact of a disaster is so much more numbing and more lugubrious than theoretical business impact analysis. Block after block of streets are lined on both sides with abandoned houses, bare concrete slabs where homes used to stand.  

Ever considered using a mobil recovery facility? This (right) is a bank branch on Read Boulevard, almost two years after the hurricane destroyed the original branch behind it.

Be sure to look at the last photo in the slide show. Those are two infamous, ubiquitous FEMA trailers. Imagine your family living in one of those - in front of your own house - for 2 years.