Mike Aslaksen has received thousands of e-mail messages with such questions that also seek clarifications to aerial pictures of Louisiana that he has posted on the Internet.
Aslaksen heads a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency charged with ensuring the security of navigation.
It usually takes aerial photographs of areas hit by hurricanes and posts them on the Internet.
Not only does the agency provide information to the Coast Guard and the military about the situation on the high seas, it also gives to those evacuated ahead of a hurricane, who are concerned about the extent of the damage caused by the storm.
Making the photographs available and responding to queries via e-mail is "the least that I can do", Aslaksen said.
Since August 30, after Katrina hit the Gulf coast, a government-owned Cessna aircraft over flying the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama has taken about 8,300 pictures. As many as 41 million electronic files have been created on the Website www.noaa.gov, said the government official.
Thanks to the digital equipment used during the shoot, the pictures get posted very quickly whereas four years ago, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the situation was different.
"Technology has really changed. We can put the data on Internet very fast," Aslaksen pointed out. "We were using a film-based camera in 2001, we had to scan the photos."
It took the agency a week to provide the first pictures of the World Trade Center.
The information bank managed by NOAA gained in popularity in the wake of the hurricane thanks to Google Earth, an Internet program that allows its users to view exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as local points of interest.
The device that allows users to virtually fly around the globe has become a hit of the summer of 2005.
The work done by NOAA is ideally complementing the gigantic collection of images made from a plane or satellite as it became possible to gauge the extent of damage caused by the hurricane by comparing pictures made before and after Katrina made landfall.
That is exactly what Douglas Hillman, an artist from near Chicago and a technology fan, did.
Using 78 aerial pictures taken by NOAA, he has created with the help of Google Earth the same number of comparative exhibits of landscapes before and after the hurricane.
"This is not an entirely precise process, as the pictures are taken from slightly different angles," Hillman told The New York Times.
Nevertheless, houses can be seen on these pictures.
Victims of the hurricane appreciate this when they view the pictures from dozens of kilometers (miles) away.
"Thanks for the terrific work being done here. I am a refugee formerly [last week] living at 2132 S. Glencove Lane ... Thanks for any help you might can give!" wrote a refugee named Delilah, who had been evacuated to Texas.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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