Military patrolling streets after Hurricanes

As I stated in another thread I am a catostrophic claims insurance adjuster, so I go to where hurricanes cause damage, usually within 1 day of it making landfall if possible, to begin the claims process for insureds.
in 2005 I was in Abbeville La, driving to N.O. and back to do inspections on damaaged homes. When Rita entered the Gulf of Mexico and it became clear tat I was going to be pretty close to landfall, we were told to evacuate. So me and my brother, who works with me, weighed our options. After realizing that the nearest state to find a hotel with a vacancy was in Oklahoma and also realizing that because of traffic, it was taking people 15 hours to drive 100 miles or so, we decided to stay in Abbeville and hope for the best.
The power went off at around 7pm the night before the storm actually came in, so we fired up our battery and gas powered lanterns, opened our northward facing doors and watched as the rain poured down and the wind began bending trees over to their sides. I took some video as the storm came in but due to the darkness the quality was horrible, so i dont even have it anymore.
So as the night grew later and the storm grew stronger, i shut my door and curtains, hoping that if the large front window exploded the curtains would deflect the glass at least a little bit.
As it got later i became really tired, its hard to believe but i actually fell asleep. The people below us had generator running just below my window and the A.C vents, which wasnt running due to the power being off but my brother thinks the fumes may have came through the opened vents, which in turn caused me to feel very tired and finally go to sleep.
Anyway the storm came and went, and the next morning we left the hotel to survey the damage.
We went to downtown Abbeville and I noticed a sizeable military presence in the city directing traffic offering their assistance. While stopped at an intersection, I noticed an Army Officer to my right, speaking with a couple of civilians. He had his M-16 in one hand and something else in the other, when i ooked closer, I noticed that it was the clip to his rifle. He turned his weapon over and just as he began to load it, I snapped this picture.
When I did this, the civillin that you can see staring at me in the pic, saw me take the picture. He then turned to the soldier and said something to him, when he did this the soldier came over to my truck and asked me what I was doing taking his picture. I told him I just thought it would make an itneresting image and I was taking pics of lots of things. His response was pretty surprising because he began yelling that I had no right taking his picture or any other pictures of any law enforcement personell. I said, oh i didnt realize the military was here for law enforcement, i thought you were here to help people, at which point he began yelling and cussing at me lol. He said that he was here to help by being there he was being a deterrent to any criminal activity and I was not allowed to take his or any other soldiers photograph.
At this point, not wanting to piss off an officer in the Army (gold bar on his hat) I noticed I was able to drive away and did so as quickly as i could lol he was still yelling at me as I pulled away.
I found his reaction to being photographed very strange, considering he was just there to "help"
Heres the photo and I apologize in advance for the length of the post. For one thing I just wanted to tell of my interesting story/adventure, despite the dangerous situation and everything else, it was kind of exciting in a weird sort of way lol. Also I wanted to use the story to kind of "set the mood" i guess.
Also heres a link to just a fraction of the images I had taken of some of the damage.
www.gameznetwork.com...
Edited to make the image a bit smaller









[edit on 27-1-2007 by Kr0n0s]

I wanted to add this and I was running out of room lol.
I heard/read from several sources that these storms gave the government the perfect opportunity to test out certain tactics.
for example, Katrina allowed them to test how feasible and easy it would be to actually keep people "quarantined", shutting the city of New Orleans down and not allowing people to leave after a certain period of time.
Then, going in with police, military AND Blackwater Security Force Contractors, to kick down doors and confiscate every weapon they could get their hands on.
I wonder if the innocent, law abiding citizens ever got their weapons back?
I actually met one of the contractors (mercenaries) a couple of weeks after the storm. I went to an insureds home for an inspection and his son, who was in Blackwaters employment, walked through and helped me with his fathers inspection.
He was pretty open about his employment with BW and resented me calling him a mercenary lmao. He was also pretty open to some of their operations, telling me that he had already been in the 9th ward sector of NO and was going back there on that day.
Anyway, as Katrina gave the govt an experiment in keeping people IN a city Hurricane Rita gave them the opportunity to experiment on keeping people OUT of a major city (Houston/ Port Arthur area)
After Rita hit I asked my employer if I could turn in the rest of my NO flood claims to relocate to take some claims for SE Tx and SW La.
Some people in the SE Tx area werent allowed back to their homes for 2-3 weeks after landfall (for safety reasons) riiiiiiiiiight.
This made my job quite take quite a bit longer, since its a lot easier to inspect damaged homes when the insured is actually there.
I dont know if these (theories) are true or not but they DO make a lot of sense, to me at least.
There is soooo much more that I could say about all this but I think these posts are long enough and dont want to bore you guys any more than I already have lol.
Here is the link, again, to what storm pics i have uploaded.. I probably have a total of 5000 storm related images but these were some of the most interesting ones I saved.
Storm Images