Saw this morning a brief mention on Fox News about hams doing health
and welfare emergency traffic for New Orleans. "Only reliable
communications in the area". They showed a few ham transcievers, one
displaying a 70cm band frequency, another HF rig on 20 meters in the
phone subband.

This is the sort of disaster that ham radio handles well. Cell phones
are mostly out, as well as most any other comm system that needs
physical infrastructure to function.