It took a long time here too. Some things never got rebuilt. But there was enough left for people to live here while the reconstruction was going on. That is a big difference. People need a place to live, work and eat to make the rebuilding happen. Supplies need to be somewhere too. I can totally understand the delays in New Orleans-! What changed the most was the population, we called them Hugonites! People from all over that came here to work and never left! But there are some signs still- forests mainly, you can see them coming back but it will take decades to be full blown forests! Another thing it did was clean up a lot of areas that were bad to begin eith- abandoned homes and poor poor people, their homes were leveled!