Sweeney, 39, who returned with his wife on Sunday to inspect the damage, installed the floor, salvaging the boards from another house.

"I pulled the nails out of every board myself," Sweeney said.

Before Hurricane Katrina handed this city its worst disaster ever, Sweeney's floors sat 12 feet above the marshland and the canal running next to the dock in back of his house. Like the rest of the homes here, the house sits on huge wooden pilings to keep flood waters from entering. That height, Sweeney said, was considered safe by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or otherwise he wouldn't have been allowed to build.

Along the highway leading to Sweeney's house, where all the buildings were constructed only yards from the road, one car sat on its roof; another rested on its side. A boat was on the second-floor balcony of one home, and nothing remained of another home but a foundation. A house a few doors down was moved several feet off its foundation as the winds hollowed out virtually the entire interior, leaving only the exterior walls standing.

Sweeney was still trying to find his 32-foot boat, which was moored at the dock just behind his house.

"Oh my God! This is incredible" Sweeney's wife, Sharon, said when she walked inside her house for the first time since the hurricane hit nearly a week ago. "It was a beautiful home."

The hurricane sent a gigantic wall of water through this city about 20 miles north of New Orleans, knocking out a levee as it made its way several miles north to downtown, where it reached the second floors of City Hall and the main police station — both of which remained evacuated on Sunday.

"I served two tours in Vietnam, and I've seen places in Eden Isles (south of the city along Lake Pontchartrain) that look worse than places over there," said the city's chief of staff, Reinhard Dearing. "It's bad."

Dearing, during an interview on Sunday, said the eye of the hurricane passed closer to Slidell than it did to New Orleans and buildings here sustained more structural damage, although New Orleans sustained more flood damage.

Slidell, Dearing said, is the hardest hit city in Louisiana.

"We got houses that the water went to the top of the house," he said.

Dearing stayed with his wife and son during the storm, putting their four dogs on the dining room table as the flood waters rose six feet. His wife is 5 feet 2 inches and cannot swim, so he put her in a pirogue, a small boat, and walked her to safety.

"I went against my own advice and stayed," he said.

All of Slidell remained without power Sunday, except for the major hospitals, and Dearing said it could still be weeks before it returns. One of the city's two power grids "is gone," he said, and the other is damaged.

The city and police services were being conducted out of a command center on high ground just outside downtown.

Asked where he could be reached later, Dearing pointed to an air mattress in front of his desk with a blue bath towel spread across the top.

"That's where I sleep," he said. "I'm here 24 hours."

Near Dearing's desk, Carol Lanoux, the city's assistant finance director, tried to read what she could from soggy records retrieved from the finance office, whose only story was flooded. Even the payroll will have to be done by hand.

With many of the city's businesses damaged or destroyed, Dearing said, the economic effect for this metropolitan area of about 80,000 will be felt for many months.

Fifty-five percent of the city's income came from sales taxes, which included two cents on every dollar for car sales, he said. Now that the car lots are closed, he said he has no idea how the city will make up the losses.

"The commercial impact to south Louisiana is going to be horrendous."

Nearly 50 percent of the people who lived in Slidell worked in New Orleans, about a 45-minute drive to the south, Dearing said.

Now, those people have no place to work, and even if they did they would have great difficulty getting there. The main bridge to the city, along Interstate 10, is severely damaged, with roadway missing in several places along one span.

On Sunday, a large sign along I-10 in Slidell flashed the message: "Closed to all traffic New Orleans metro area."

"No way to get to work; no work to go to," said Sweeney who, along with his wife, was among those who drove across the I-10 bridge every day to work in New Orleans.

The Sweeneys are like many people who live here.

Scott was a self-employed video engineer, running video booths at the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans convention center — both of which are now closed. His wife, Sharon, worked at Methodist Hospital in New Orleans.

He said the damages will be covered by flood insurance, which cost him $1,350 a year.

"Yea, I got insurance, but the biggest thing is jobs," Sweeney said. "What do we do?"

Scott and his wife had just sold their house on Highway 433 for $202,500 and purchased a house near the lake, recently installing $10,000 in kitchen cabinets. He also owns two rental houses that were both heavily damaged.

"I was going through an act of sale on Tuesday, (the day after Katrina hit)," he said, adding that he had borrowed on his existing home to finance the new home. "Now I got $4,200 in house notes due this month."

Sweeney, who evacuated to Baton Rouge before the storm, said the important thing is that he and his relatives were not injured.

Sweeney and his wife plan to stay in Slidell for a few days cleaning up the mess and then return to his sister's house in Baton Rouge, which is flooded with hurricane refugees.

"You can't look at this every day. It gets depressing," Sweeney said, as he cleaned up debris. "You never think something like this will happen to you."