We joined the National Guard for its patrol in the Firth District on Tuesday night, a week after the levee was breeched. Watching soldiers in a pitch black American city patrol with night vision and automatic weapons, fully ready to engage, was something I never though I would experience.

There's a six o'clock curfew in the city and several roadblocks as you approach, keeping people out after dark.

This is downtown New Orleans. It's an eerie, (mostly) abandoned large city. News reports don't do justice to the strangeness you feel there at night.

Receding waters have left trash everywhere. On top of the damage done by the hurricane, the trash and smell in the flooded and boundary areas is indescribable.

Fires smolder in collapsed buildings.

Trash isn't the only thing the water left behind. This boat is on a sidewalk on St. Claude Street outside a looted school.

Before leaving, some people scrawled warnings to looters.

Some worked, some didn't.

In Bywater and in other areas, I assume, animals that were left behind run freely. Newly feral dogs are joined by horses wandering the flooded and trash strewn streets occasionally surprising patrolling National Guard troops.

As houses are checked for survivors, they're marked in spray-paint with the date.

Here's what the convention center, a truly huge place, looked like last night. I didn't know there were that many chairs in existence.

A motorized wheelchair is left behind in the tangle of chairs and trash on the sidewalk.

A trash can just outside the Convention Center.

Another boat left high and dry, this one in a tow zone.

Even the French Quarter, mostly in-tact, feels dark and abandoned.

(I may not get the upload bandwidth to upload these (and other) photos for a few days but I'll try.)