Nevertheless, the death toll on that coast yesterday passed the 200 mark, with bodies still being washed ashore. While attention has focused on New Orleans, the Mississippi towns that were hit have slipped out of view.
"If you're not emotional when you see this, then nothing's ever going to make you emotional," says Tony Miller, who has come down from Illinois wearing his International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 702 T-shirt, to help restore some semblance of life to Pass Christian, a favourite place for weekenders from New Orleans.
"This is about as bad as it gets. I've been doing this for the last 30 years and I've never seen one like this. It's more like a tsunami. This gives new meaning to the word hopeless.
"What came in here was just a wall of water," said Miller. "This is pretty much ground zero." He feels sorry for the local people because it was predicted that the eye of the storm would miss them.
"I get a little bitter about New Orleans, because they knew what was going to happen."
Today he and his team were starting the reconstruction of a patch of the coast that has been almost wiped out. Just down the coast the vice president, Dick Cheney, was coming via helicopter for a visit. "Yes, the big dogs are coming in," said Miller.
The big dogs, in the shape of President George Bush and Dick Cheney have indeed been coming in as the criticism against the administration mounts. But here the anger of New Orleans against a government that seemed slow in its reaction is lacking.
The National Guardsmen and police who man the roadblocks are more relaxed, less "locked and loaded" than in the city.
The Gulf coast is a different world from the Big Easy, its economy is dependent on floating casinos and shrimpers, its residents a mixture of the retired, tourists and fishermen. The casinos have been legal since 1992 on the understanding that they stayed afloat, a concession to the disapproval of some in the heavily Baptist state. Now they are a vital part of the local economy, providing 17,000 jobs and $98m (£53m) in state taxes.
Given that so many fundamentalist Christian radio stations are suggesting that God's hand was involved in punishing New Orleans and the Gulf coast for their wicked ways, those who see a righteous vengeance at work would be gratified at what has happened to those very casinos. The Treasure Bay in Biloxi stands marooned like a wrecked pirate ship. The President Casino was hurled about half a mile from its moorings to land on the Holiday Inn.
"That's the Copa Casino, I used to go there," says Nathan Powell, a dock worker further down the coast at Gulfport and just round the corner from the Crescent school for gaming and bartending. "And that's where it used to be." He points a couple of hundred yards up the coast and chuckles.
Most of the casinos seem anxious to do the righteous thing themselves. "They've told us they're going to carry on paying us," said Rob Gronkoski, a percussionist who, along with his girlfriend, Kapri DeBerry, works for Beau Rivage, another casino that took a hit but is proving the old maxim that you should never bet against the house and hopes to be back in business next year.
Now the governor, Haley Barbour, and his fellow politicians are considering whether the law can be changed so that a floating crap game no longer has to be quite so literal.
A few miles away at Diamondhead, Lieutenant Claude Pittman is surveying the wreck of the Diamondhead Yacht Club restaurant where he had enjoyed many a fine seafood dinner.
"This was a resort," he says. "Now everything on the beach is devastated. Every one of these" - he indicates what look like piles of driftwood assembled by a drunk - "was a home. That there was a live bait shop. People haven't seen much of what's happened here. All they've seen is New Orleans."
But Mississippi has not been completely overlooked. The lieutenant lists the big names that have come down or sent supplies: the actor Morgan Freeman, who is organising a benefit; the country singer Faith Hill; two famous quarterbacks - "you've heard of Brett Favre and Steve McNair, haven't you?" - who paid for five 18-wheelers to be loaded with food and sent down.
The search for the living in Mississippi is essentially over. Unlike, New Orleans, there are no hold-outs tucked away down some flooded street waiting for the National Guard to knock on their door and tell them to finish their beer and get out of town. Here the waves came in - some say as high as 60 feet - and the waves went out. So now the search is on for the dead.
"We've found bodies," says Lieutenant Pittman. "We mark them for latitude and longitude and we leave them there, because we don't have the proper suits to deal with them."
In their wake the waves left an arbitrary trail of flattened homes and upturned trailers. A custard-coloured bath-mat hangs from a tree top like the banner of some defeated army. Someone's auburn wig lies at the side of a bridge.
In DeLisle, Bob Askey, 57, says he was up to his waist in water but survived. "I thought we'd had it. Mr JC, down there, he's drowned. I've found my two daughters but I still haven't found my son."
And there is no shortage of beach philosophers around to see some hope in the wreckage.
"We're digging out," said Lee Jordan, on the coast at Gulfport, who is busy seeing how much damage there has been. "It's what you do when you hurt.
"I'm staying. I'm 59. I'm too old to start over and too young to retire. Anyway, folks need a little challenge once in a while to test their steel."
