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The urban canopy got a thinning and trees in New Orleans have suffered tremendously, says Michelle Thomas, New Orleans Deputy Mayor of Operations. "Because the ground was so saturated in advance of the storm and the amount of rain in the time that the storm was over the city of New Orleans, many of our large live oaks were completely toppled."
She says the city has fielded over a thousand calls for service for downed trees so far.
At last count she says about two dozen of the hundred year old majestic trees are gone, but they are still in the process of finding downed trees. "We lost several on St. Charles Ave., on Broadway, certainly in the Uptown area and in Gentilly there was a lot of damage to very mature oak trees."
These trees are impossible to replace. "Just as after Katrina, we replanted new trees across the city and we will, as we do always, every year, continue to plant new trees, but it takes 100 years to replace a hundred year oak, so there are parts of our city that have a lost a bit of history."
