Katrina: The Aftermath T+3 weeks (Slidell, LA)

My family had not even been home (because the power was finally back on) one week before I ventured up there to help with the clean up work. My ward from church was assigned to go to Hattiesburg, MS but I went down a day earlier to help in my hometown of Slidell, LA. I spent the morning raking layers of pine straw and pine cones from our front and back yards. My father had done a majority of the work and still we didn't finish. You can only work for so long until it is just TOO hot. I spent the afternoon at the Bishop's Storehouse helping to get all the work orders arranged for the crew coming from the surrounding areas to complete the next day.

I'm standing at the end of the driveway at my parent's house looking left in the below picture. That's our mailbox at the bottom left. That's the tree at the edge of our property that had to be cut down. It's just hang out there. You can kinda see the street lined with all the cleaned up debris and trees chunks just waiting for the government to come pick them up.
This one is looking straight forward from the end of the driveway. It's a much better view of all the rubbage lining the entire subdivision. You used to be able to see houses instead of dead foliage.
The apartment complex as you enter the subdivision. The entire thing is blue tarped. The fence what surrounds it is completely gone too. That mess you see in front is the pavillion where we used to play at kids before it was smashed by at least 4 trees.
I didn't have time to get into the city to see the damage there. I would rather be working and being helpful. My subdivision seems like it cleaned up (the outside yards, at least) rather quickly. Besides, you don't know what it looked like before so you really wouldn't know the difference.