[LittleOldLady]

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new orleans is shaped like a bowl. The highest point, at the base of the levies, is at sea level. The lowest point is at city park and st.john bayou which is about 10 to 12 foot below. If a cat 5 storm would hit the city, the storm surge would fill the city up with water to the top of the lake levy about 12 foot above sea level.
The first french settlers buried their dead below ground but because of floods they went to the spanish tradition.

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Yes, New Orleans is a bowl, and the bottom of the bowl is in Broadmoor uptown (roughly 8 feet below sea level), not at City Park and Bayou St. John. The highest points are on Gentilly and Esplanade ridges and the natural levees along the river, about 8 feet above sea level. My house is 1 foot below sea level which is relatively high but not high enough. I am just a short distance inland from the original shore of Lake Pontchartrain (not the current shore), part way up the natural levee that formed along the original lakeshore. When the streets flood, the upward slope is definitely noticeable. But Gentilly Ridge, nearby, is even higher than the original lake shore.

If a storm pushes Lake Pontchartrain over the levees, worst case the water could cover a three-story building (depending on where that building is located). Once the water overtops the levee and fills the bowl, the levees would have to be breeched and the water pumped out (in fact every drop of rain that falls has to be pumped out of the city)--the city would be devastated.

Obligatory poker content, if there is a storm in the Gulf headed our way and you were planning to come to New Orleans to play poker, don't come..........

LOL