I would like to make a small point here. There were just as many or more who not only helped themselves by tearing down and rebuilding or gutting and rehabilitating their homes and other properties, but who went out of their way to give abundant hugs, meals, shelter, as well as verbal "thank yous" etc. to those who took the time out from their own lives to help us put ours back together. They will never be forgotten.
Not everyone or everything that has to do with New Orleans is lazy, ungrateful, debauched or evil. As a native who falls into none of the above categories, it's tiresome reading nothing but the negative.
I was speaking of the first days of Katrina and those who wouldn’t leave but could have. They stood and sat on bridges and overpasses in 90 degree weather complaining about not having had a hot meal for 3 days. Instead of organizing and building an outdoor latrine and policing it themselves for safety issues, they defecated where they slept and ate inside the Superdome. Those sent to Houston and other places also sat and were waited on instead of pitching in and serving food, working clean-up and keeping kids under control and amused. They looted, robbed, threatened, raped and terrorized people. Those who rebuilt are a different breed of cat that the people I’m speaking of. The ones I’m speaking of took government checks and stayed in motels for a year or more, used financial respurces they were given to set themselves up in a new home/apartment to buy bling and drugs, and so on. First came the complaints and demands about being taken care of, then came the theft, fraud and misuse of funds.
For the first time in my adult life, I was ashamed to be an American.