After the water is pumped out 99% of the homes will be OK with a little work and Gov't money so why does everyone keep saying it's destroyed?
You're kidding, right?
If you're not kidding, you need to click backhoe's links and spend 100 hours reading the way many of us have.
I've done construction work all my life-- after months of being submerged in brackish ( salt ) water, everything below the waterline will be mostly ruined.
Wiring- power & signal- will have to be removed and replaced.
Anything that can corrode, will. Think pipes, valves, steel, aluminum.
Most of a city's utilities are undergound-- pumps for water and sewage, as an example. All ruined.
Once you soak a pourous material ( wood, sheetrock, fabric ) in salty water, how do you get the salt out? If you don't, it continues to attract moisture from the air itself.
In my opinion, NO is largely insalvagable.
99%?! Where in the world did you get your contractors license? Did you loot it?
Nothing will be left but frames (if that much), everything else soaked off.
I guess you have never had your house fill up with nasty water! - 99% of those flooded homes will be tore down
After one week in water, sheet rock dissolves.
After one week in water, timber in houses is bowed and unsafe.
Those homes are all destroyed.
It might be less costly to bulldoze them all, and then landfill in the hole, and build it up to 10-12 feet above sea level before rebuilding. This is what Congress is currently discussing doing.
Or it might be better just to resettle everyone somewhere else, broken up and scattered throughout the country.
The lights in New Orleans have already been turned out.
If you don't mind living in a rotting, moldy house.
Flooding is far more damaging than fires, twisters, and bombing. Once all the water is pumped out, the foundations of the buildings are still weak and are prone to collapse.