And the rest of the story?

Mobile was the French Settlement from which New Orleans was settled (as I 
recall). Though I worked on excavations at Fort Conde (Mobile; undergraduate 
shovel-bummery) many years ago, I never made myself familiar in detail with 
the local archival holdings, or where they might have been. Apparently, all 
of downtown Mobile was underwater, and  have no idea what resources there 
may have been lost.

Pensacola, one of the earliest French (briefly) and Spanish settlements was 
devasted last year and I haven't heard what the extent of the damage was 
there, except at Fort Pickens.

When the Park Service team rescued the materials from Jamestown, they 
brought them to Fort Lee, where I work, for processing, and the team is 
extremely impressive, including a contractor who specializes in dealing with 
catastrophes, though New Orleans may be the mother of all catastrophes. Of 
course if the Park Service and/or Congress had responded to repeated 
requests for elevated collections space at Jamestown, they wouldn't have had 
the problem to begin with, but hey, we've got terrorists to kill half a 
world away! Likewise, drifting away from the topic, the (local) Corps of 
Engineers and local scientists have been issuing warnings for years about 
what would happen in New Orleans, and the current administration, 
particularly, but also previous ones, have steadfastly chopped out the funds 
to deal with it. High up in the political atmosphere the spin line casuistry 
is "Oh well, it wouldn't have mattered; we weren't planning to deal with a 
category 5 storm, anyway." How do you suppose this drivel would go over in 
Holland?

Best hopes to the living, and the remains of the dead. Sadly it will be 
necessary to divert funds from numerous other, always shortly funded, 
historic preservation projects to deal with the consequences of political 
short-sightedness in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Any news about the rest of the Gulf Coast would be welcome.
Tim T.