Going away and leaving it untended was irresponsible. Your post shows you have no idea what's expected. I made the same comment to Dutch friends and they could not believe it either.
And your post shows you have no idea how massive the levee system is and how many huge breaks there were. Nothing could have been done to sandbag those levees. If it's that easy let's forget rebuilding them at a cost of billions of dollars and just throw up some sandbags. That should do the trick.
Oh, and I'm not a levee expert but I did spend the night at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
There's hundreds of miles of levees. Where do you start especially since the entire life of the storm was 6 days? Two days of that was in Florida.
D'OH....If only one of you had thought to put your finger in the dike!!