For the last week and a half I have stared intently at the television news, hoping to catch a glimpse of friends, colleagues, my old neighbourhood, or the office that I worked in. Hoping against hope that they, their belongings and love ones have somehow survived the carnage wrought upon the Big Easy. I have also clicked "refresh" on my e-mail literally hundreds of time desperately craving an update on the plight of those among the missing. As at the time of writing scores of attorneys that I consider friends remain unaccounted for.

The truth is, however, that almost all of them will be fine because my lawyer friends possessed what the majority of New Orleanians did not; a car, money for petrol, and somewhere to go. My desperately poor clients and their families will likely not have been so fortunate and I suspect when it's all said and done many of them will have lost their lives. New Orleans has always been a microcosm of American society. The "old money" wealth of the St. Charles mansions is but a stone's throw away from the all pervasive poverty of the St. Thomas projects. While the have-nots are funnelled away from the tourists, the residents cannot but notice that fully one third of the city lives at or below the poverty line.

I have had tears well up many times, full blown sobbing on several occasions, and while I habitually fulminate to no-one in particular, I have lost my temper on only one occasion. An NBC reporter was standing outside the Superdome with the backdrop of thousands of people waiting for a bus to take them out of the city. Most of these persons had been waiting outside on the pavement for food, water and a bed to sleep in for three nights and two days. The NBC reporter stated that "there is no evidence that racism played a part in the relief effort," and then the camera panned out to show the crowd standing forlornly ? of which every single one was a person of colour.

Watching the response of the US Government was like the last days of Pompeii. Anyone who has spent time in the Big Easy knows that following a hurricane if you drive your Chevy to the levy it will not be dry ? yet officials claim that everything was unforeseeable. The Federal Emergency Management Director's last job was as Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. While this might qualify him to assist in the evacuation of the New Orleans Zoo, it is scarcely the resume you would insist on to head up the relief from a flood of Biblical proportions. If I am being charitable I can mark the Keystone Cop response down to bureaucratic incompetence, but I'd wager the farm that the answer is at least partially rooted in the all pervasive fact of American life, skin colour.

New Orleans is in the deep south and it is important to remember that America was in slavery for longer than it has been out of it. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of the American psyche, in an area long suppressed which we don't speak of, every American knows that if Katrina had descended on an affluent white area the picture would be very different. Within three days of September 11 the relief fund had $7 billion, the Katrina victims don't have two pennies to rub together, and are sleeping in the most makeshift of conditions. I heard today that Bangladesh sent $1 million to the Katrina relief fund. Run that by me again ? one of the poorest countries in the world is sending money to the richest country in the world because it has been so struck by the unmet needs of US citizens? The contrast could not be more stark. And, paradoxically, when white people help themselves to products in stores the news media call it 'scrapping for basic necessities', whereas black people 'loot'.

I have heard the news media repeatedly refer to the displaced as 'refugees.' My dictionary defines a refugee as "an individual who has left his or her native country and is unwilling or unable to return to it because of persecution or fear of persecution (as because of race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion)". But aren't these people Americans?

The truth is that while technically speaking they are part of the citizenry, for many in white America the black New Orleans indigent constitute the detritus, and are best kept out of sight and out of mind. The print media journalists repeatedly say that the scenes of devastation are "like images from another country". These desperately poor areas were to all intents and purposes another country and have been for several decades ? a country that is well and truly a third world nation with 40 children packed into a classroom bereft of resources, taught by an unqualified teacher, and no healthcare to speak of.

Notwithstanding all of the above I love New Orleans. It is the kind of love you give to a family member in spite of his/her flaws, and one over which you are powerless to sever. Much of the rest of Louisiana I would happily trade you for a Starbucks Venti Latte, but I wouldn't have missed living in New Orleans for all the tea in China. America is a new country. Its cities and institutions have been in existence for only a couple of hundred years ? the blink of an eye in terms of human history. The rest of the States, for the most part, is based on the cookie-cutter format of malls, McD's, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart. If I showed you a picture of the average city in America you would be hard pressed to tell me whether you were looking at South Dakota or Southern California, such is the homogeneity. New Orleans was the exception. The French Quarter was not only a national treasure, but an international one. Walking down its narrow streets, the sense of history is palpable. There is not a franchise in sight, all of the business being locally owned and run. There is (or rather was) a joie de vivre that is hard to convey on paper, but anyone who has spent time in the city will be nodding their head in agreement. Preservation Hall; live jazz; Louis Armstrong; the coffee shop that gave the world the Caf? Au Lait; Mardi Gras: the list of unique attractions is a lengthy one.

I rode in a Mardi Gras Krewe in 2003 and it ranks as one of my best days ever. What most struck me about the event were my fellow riders. This wasn't a show they put on for the tourists, it was a tradition passed on from parents to children. In many ways it defined New Orleanians, the sheer unbridled joy, irreverence and stupidity of being pulled by a tractor on a cold February day through the streets of a town throwing necklaces at someone you've never met. The riders paid for all of their beads and the cost of the float themselves and almost all came back year in, year out for the natural high it offered.

The office where I worked is another good example of what makes New Orleans so special. It was okay to bring your dog to work and on a daily basis there were at least a half dozen pooches wandering the floors. You could smoke in your office as long as you shut the door. Everyone was paid the same as there was a feeling that we were all in it (whatever "it" was), together. Cars were shared. You came to work whenever you wanted to; there was no such thing as a timesheet or a nine-to-five. New Orleans was one of the last bastions of hope, a place where the conviviality of surroundings displaced the American quest for Hummers and gated communities. With one fell swoop it is all now gone and the office is toast.

If I am brutally honest, I suspect that I am writing a city's obituary. New Orleans' viability under sea level while surrounded by water has always been tenuous, its foothold on dry land precarious. While other areas affected by Katrina will recover, the vast exodus from New Orleans will be mostly one-way traffic I fear.

If this does occur, I think that 200 years from now people will write about New Orleans the way we think of Atlantis ? a place steeped in wonderful awe and mystery that commentators speculate about and attempt to bring to life. Sure it had its problems, poverty ran rampant, but there was a magic, an electricity in the air that may have been copied, but seldom equalled. Most of all it was passionately alive. It was the place that materialism forgot, a place where it was cool to be broke and love your life. A city where the entertainment doesn't start until 2 a.m., and doesn't end until the last reveller heads off for a late breakfast or an early lunch.

Shortly after moving to New Orleans I happened to be in a bar in the French Quarter on July 3. I asked the bartender if he would be open the following day: that day being Independence Day. The bartender removed the cigarette from his mouth and said contemptuously in a slow southern drawl that "we ain't closed in 40 years". Well he's closed today and it remains to be seen whether those days will ever be re-captured. Even if the city does rise from the tide I suspect that it will be like the Disney version of the wildwest, a sanitised New Orleans that will take the tourist buck but in return will give potted memories rather than authentic experiences. So farewell, Big Easy, history will forgive your flaws and remember y'all for what you were: an island unlike any other in a sea of ubiquity.