They Got No Mail

I noticed that our mail problem here, post Hurricane Katrina, has made the news wire nationally. Mail service to the city of New Orleans is slight at best. Some areas were so destroyed that the post office can not deliver there. Since there is no home lefty or or no one residing, the mail is sent to forwarding address provided or to Baton Rouge (our second largest city to the north).
What this means is that people who live in the city get mail with a mailing date as much as 3 months ago. Here in my own suburb of Jefferson Parish this is not such a problem. Mail is slower, but only slightly. Now that residents here are back in their homes and debris has been removed, the post office is trying to conduct routes normally in my area.
But there is quite a volume of mail sent before and in the first weeks after the hurricane that I never received. I assume it is lost or has been destroyed, yet the post office will not admit to it. Some may be important mail, as in tax bills that must be paid to avoid delinquency or social security, settlement checks from an insurance company or other pension checks.
Other mail, like magazine subscriptions, are not things to worry about. Essentially, a letter a child sent to Santa Claus at the "North Pole" this year would arrive there faster than a Christmas card that was mailed to anyone in the city of New Orleans. About half the city itself still has no mail service, and the other half if inconsistent. There is an embargo on second and third class mail (magazines, gift catalogues) and "junk mail" (those unsolicited advertisements. What this means is that information/communication is taking place by phone and E mail here more than by regular mail. Ahhhh, I know this is a trivial topic, but it shows you just one of many ways our daily lives are still being disrupted by the greatest natural disaster in American history, Hurricane Katrina.