I was around New Orleans after Katrina for a month and the biggest obstacle for us was finding a safe place to stay. All the parks were full, no houses available to rent and all the apartments were full or damaged. There was not even a place to pitch a tent. We ended up staying in our cars in a church parking lot which worked out ok because they had bathrooms and coffee in the morning, but it wasn't nearly as comfortable as it could have been if we could have just camped out. Everything was total chaos, even the wal-mart parking lot was full all the time. Everyone looked like zombies and we were all on edge. It was very disorienting. It's one thing to say I'll just camp out but it's another thing when there is no place to put a tent. People were guarding their land and there wasn't a trusting person to be found and you can't set up a tent just anywhere. Alligators and snakes were turning up in places they don't normally frequent. It was an eye opening experience for sure. We were lucky, at least we had cars to sleep in and a safe place to park at night. There was one convienience store opened that made sandwiches and the line went around the building 3 times. It was like a 2 hour wait in line just to get some food. At one point, when the store told everyone they were going to be out of sandwiches, a man went back to his car and got out a shotgun. The police caught him before he could get it loaded though. Desperate people resort to desperate measures so you have to be on guard at all times and thats not as easy as it sounds.