Almost two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf coast, Lesly Curwin accompanies an aerial reconnaissance mission to assess the damage.
The Blackhawk helicopter lifted off in a clatter from Baton Rouge airport, flown by pilots of the Texas National Guard.
New Orleans is inundated with filthy water
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We flew a hundred miles south towards the ghost city of New Orleans, its downtown skyline shimmering through the morning mist. Lines of green oily water criss-crossed much of the city.
Warehouses, car parks, power plants, highways were inundated by the filthy waters. But there were signs below of the gigantic operation to restore the city to life.
Chinook helicopters dumped huge sandbags on to the breaches in the concrete defences which failed to protect the city. In other areas, yellow earth-movers and diggers shored up other defences which have been successfully sealed.
Down the flooded roads, red inflatables and green army boats toured door-to-door, searching for the living and the dead. Even though the waters have receded since the flooding began, roofs were often the only thing to be seen.
Laid waste
Whole neighbourhoods were still largely under water. But there were patches of dry land, and in some higher-ground areas, houses looked almost untouched.
It was a different story as the helicopter banked and set off eastwards for the Mississippi coast where the hurricane did its worst.
As we travelled down towards Biloxi and Gulfport, the effects of the high winds and the storm surge which followed were startling.
Five hundred feet below was a coastline laid waste. Buildings near the sea were blown flat. Only the shape of the foundations remained, often, bizarrely with a swimming pool alongside them.
Engineers are hard at work repairing the city's flood defences
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It looked as if a giant steamroller had flattened every building. White boats lay a quarter of a mile inland among trees, tossed there by winds and the storm surge. A plane lay on its back like a stranded insect at a small airfield.
A railway bridge was smashed to smithereens, the track blown away. At the state port, containers were scattered like children's Lego bricks.
Further down the coast, mobile homes were collapsed down to folded metal. Perhaps the weirdest image of all was a giant floating casino which had smashed ashore and lay like a beached whale amid crushed buildings.
Gigantic task
The effect was of a multi-coloured junk-yard, punctuated by the bright blue of tarpaulins which covered what was left of any buildings left standing. But the clean-up had begun here too.
Encampments of camouflage tents housed the army forces which have arrived to help clear the mess and restore order. In some places, masses of debris have been piled in great heaps by the roadside.
As the helicopter swooped around for the return journey to Baton Rouge, it was all too clear that re-building the areas damaged by wind and water will be a gigantic long-term task.
There had been relatively few people to be seen. But the miles of devastation were evidence of the misery dealt out to tens of thousands of families in this dangerous and vulnerable region of America.
