Devastated route 23

Highway 23 going south out of New Orleans was partially blocked last weekend. Just before the town of Port Sulphur the tidal surge which accompanied Hurricane Katrina had done its worst on the living and the dead. The 20 foot high wave demolished the town cemetery and gouged the caskets from the earth. One, off -pink and rusting, lay in the middle of one carriageway of the highway, a macabre landmark on the road to a town which no longer exists.

With all the news coverage concentrated in New Orleans itself and the almost complete destruction of that city, the devastation caused elsewhere has all but been ignored. Late last week, listening to the local radio service in New Orleans we heard a caller to one of the shows talking about the destruction in the towns south of the city. The radio, WWL, is providing a service to people who are living without electricity, and is often first with the news.

On Friday, a colleague, Paul Cunningham, and I decided to try our luck on Highway 23 and see how far we could get in my rented car. The car was the last one available for rent in Baton Rouge the week before and had been home for a week. With no hotels, shops or garages, the small Nissan was providing bed and board. I had spent the week sleeping in the car, cadging food from the Army, and getting used to the situation. This ordinary family saloon was no match for the flooding, so we really didn't know how far we would get.

The police at the checkpoint on the edge of the city made us write our names on their list before they allowed us down the road. It was the strictest roadblock in the city, partially because there are several oil refineries in the area.

Driving south the destruction is slow to manifest itself. Towns like Myrtle Grove and Magnolia suffered wind damage, there are roofs off houses, cars blown around the place, but really nothing prepares you for what is to come. Outside of Port Sulphur an oil spill has left a huge black stain on the countryside after the flood waters receded. There is sporadic flooding but here the levees held, and after the tidal surge, which accompanied the hurricane had passed, the waters largely went down. Or so you think; until you hit Port Sulphur.

We were the first group of journalists to be allowed in and past the coffins. A house, which had blown off its foundations, is lying half in and half out of a canal. A little further on another house is in the middle of the road, the three steps up to the doorway are still in their original position, thirty yards away. Trees, electricity poles and lines are littered every where, scattered about by the huge winds like match sticks and pieces of string.

But in the town itself, the real destruction can be seen. Out of a few hundred buildings, only two are still standing, the church and the town hall. Every other building is in various states of collapse. Some are little more than a pile of wood with the remains of a roof on top. The sights are bizarre. There are houses sitting on top of the family car, others have cars blown into one of the rooms. The remains of smashed and twisted electrical appliances are everywhere.

The remains of buildings have been searched and most have been painted with a big green O, showing that they have been gone through and there are no bodies inside to be collected. One thing which comes as a relief to me is that very few people are thought to have died here, everyone got out on time. But unlike the parish of St Bernard where I had been the previous day, there are no dogs. St Bernard is a suburb of New Orleans and is almost totally cut off by the flood waters. We could only get there by a ferry used by the military and emergency services and the destruction there is huge as well. Much of it is still underwater, but most buildings are still standing.

One of the most disturbing things there is the number of obviously starving dogs wandering around. The area is devoid of people, no one has been allowed back to their homes, and the silence is eerie. One little dog when he saw our car ran out of a house and ran barking and whimpering for a mile after us down the road. It was surprisingly distressing to come across this terrible need in a little beagle in the midst of all this destruction.

In Port Sulphur there are no animals. The only local we met there was a farmer who was sifting through the wreckage of everything he had. Before the hurricane he had 400 cattle, and hasn't seen any of them since. All, he thinks, were swept away in the water.

Looking at the trees remaining standing it is clear what happened here. A wave more than 20 feet high came with the hurricane and with devastating force swept everything with it. The farmer we met had lost everything to the water and his lands were poisoned by salt and oil. His beautiful house, home to four generations of his family, was knocked off its foundations and broken in two. As we spoke to him it was all he could do to hold back his tears. He stayed on during the hurricane until the last minute and said he and his wife only fled when the trees around their house were breaking in the wind. Had they stayed they would certainly have died.

Outside, at what is left of his front door, the flood waters start. The Mile 27 sign, showing that there are 27 more miles of highway left to the state border - in this case the sea – is partially submerged.

The remaining 27 miles of Louisiana is still under water. Here the water stinks of sewage and oil, and the highway is being used as a launching pier for dozens of boats being driven by private citizens searching for their neighbours.

The farmer was worried about people in towns like Tropical Bend, Venice and Triumph. Those towns have now gone and he was afraid that several Vietnamese families who worked shrimp boats might have been tempted to stay and try to save their boats during the hurricane. If they had, there was really no chance that they are still alive.

People we met in Port Sulphur and in other badly hit areas almost all said they would rebuild. But without massive government aid that will never happen. In low lying areas susceptible to hurricanes many couldn't afford insurance and in some towns in Louisiana and Mississippi, an affected area the size of Great Britain, they lost everything. Many – but by no means all – were living in abject poverty beforehand. The Bush administration could redeem itself after the abject failure in the early days of the disaster, with a generous response to these people.