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 Gulf Coast Blog: Return to New OrleansEditor's note: The Gulf Coast Blog, compiled by the reporters and producers in CNN's Gulf Coast Bureau, tracks the post-Katrina recovery effort as residents rebuild their lives. Tell us what you think. Send e-mail to the Gulf Coast Blog. BLOG ARCHIVESPECIAL REPORT
• Rebuilding: Vital signs
• Gallery: Landmarks over time
• Storm & Flood: Making history
• I-Report: Share your photos
Sunday, October 16; Posted 10:24 p.m. ET I'm coming back to a very different New Orleans from the one I left. Six weeks ago, I said goodbye to a flooded city from a speeding, heavily armed police convoy. We'd spent a night under fire in a police station, the city was burning in several places and the rumor mill was spinning like a whirligig. We sped through stop signs, skirting around flooded areas as the police looked for a safe way to get us over the bridge and out of the city. Fast forward to the present. The water has receded, but that just reveals the full extent of the damage. Driving through the Lower 9th Ward, I passed houses that, when I last saw them, had just been rooftops poking out of the water. I stopped at the Interstate 10 on-ramp that Jeanne Meserve had reported from on the very first night. That evening it was so quiet you could hear the screams of people trapped in their attics. Now it is a high-speed six-lane highway, and you would struggle to hear someone call from 50 feet away. I drove into a bustling French Quarter, an area that was never badly flooded, and it feels like everything is back to normal. People are drunk in the middle of the day, music is blaring, and the familiar New Orleans odor is back stronger than ever. The fear and desperation we felt in those dark days seem to have been replaced by hope. From everyone I talk to, there's a genuine sense of progress. The streets are busy -- not with people desperate to leave, but with those who wanted to come back. The consensus among my colleagues is that the majority of this progress has come in the last two weeks; it's gone from a ghost town to organized chaos. I'm here for the next two weeks. Let's see if the city can maintain its momentum. I'll keep you posted. The bureauAnother major change is CNN's operation. When I left five days after Katrina hit, CNN's "bureau" was a pickup truck parked next to the pay phone outside the Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits on Canal Street. The bureau was staffed by six people and relied on a dodgy Internet connection on the fifth floor of a nearby hotel to transmit the amazing pictures we were getting. Now CNN's Gulf Coast Bureau looks like this: We have 81 staff members (down from a high of 130 a few weeks ago), which includes security, a chef, a doctor, satellite engineers, producers, reporters and a "captain." Our mascot puppy, Max has left us for a more stable home environment. We've occupied some offices in the Uptown area of city and moved into an upscale hotel in the French Quarter. Whiteboards, maps, monitors and laptops are a far cry from our corner of Canal Street. We even have cable! 
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