“It’s totally dry here,” he said, pointing to a square section of the Bucktown neighborhood. “And on the other side of the canal, it’s all under water. It’s like filling up an ice cube tray.”

The image was one of thousands the photographer shot that day — most from the jump seat of a chartered helicopter. He’d been up before dawn to meet a Texas-based chopper pilot and cruise the day-after detritus of Hurricane Katrina.

Crowded in tight around the screen, our little group of New Orleans refugees scanned every photo that flashed by, fixated on every mouse click. These weren’t the first images we’d seen of the city’s worsening post-storm predicament, but they were the first images to provide any kind of real context.

A group of about 15 friends — couples, singles and young families — had left New Orleans when the storm threatened and fled to St. Martinville, La., a tiny town in the rural Cajun country. In 2004, many of us evacuated to this small southwest Louisiana town as houseguests of mutual friends with a special knack for emergency hospitality.

When last year’s Hurricane Ivan threatened New Orleans, we laid low as the storm smacked the Florida panhandle, and waited for the “all clear” signal to return to New Orleans. Last year, it was a long weekend of near misses and easy relief. This year, we looked for any clue to tell us when and if we’d be able to return.

The pictures flashed by at 10-second intervals. Familiar landmarks like the arena-turned-refuge stood out in stark relief, while other neighborhoods — the poverty-stricken Ninth Ward, the historic Faubourg Treme — required time to decode from underneath 12-foot layers of liquid camouflage. In the hardest-hit parts of town, it was nearly impossible to make out the usual locators — street markers, architectural flourishes or business signs.

“Wait! If that’s Tulane Avenue, then what’s that?”

Chris Poche, one of the audience, tried to place the photo of a highway overpass rising briefly from the water with entry and exit ramps completely submerged. Elevated highways and cloverleaf onramps stood out against a uniform sheen of levee water.

Most of us had seen these scenes earlier in the day, pumped in a continuous feed through the various news channels. Katrina’s last-minute break to the east had spared most of southwest Louisiana’s vital infrastructure, so if you were lucky enough to make it out of the city, you could watch continuous video of the aftermath, with 12 minutes of commercial interruption for every 48 minutes of unfolding tragedy.

New Orleans residents are well acquainted with the perpetual media drone, especially during hurricane season. Predictions, comparisons, updates and warnings are all part of the June-to-November tropical storm season — as are the filler features spelling out the worst-case scenario that would wipe out the city for good. It’s the stuff that local TV stations trot out during July sweeps and CNN dusts off whenever a storm sneaks past Key West.

Over the years, we’ve learned which outlets to trust, which local weathercasters combine quirky screen presence with solid information, and to roll our eyes at the annual parade of slicker-clad Weather Channel strivers willing to risk their lives for a few minutes of screen time.

We are not, however, accustomed to evacuating New Orleans, only to find whole swaths of the low-lying city awash in lake water and hurricane runoff, with desperate residents waving desperately from their rooftops.

We watched the laptop screen slideshow with rapt attention as images of Coast Guard helicopters, flatboat rescue volunteers and flattened oak groves filled the screen. The photographer told stories for each frame, and the refugees sat rapt, crying quietly at the images of those not lucky enough to evacuate.

Over the course of an hour or so, we got to ask the photographer questions — to see if he saw anything that could give us hope for the city, even as news from the wire grew bleaker with every hour. There were two breaks in the levee by nightfall. After dodging Katrina’s deluge from above, New Orleans’ remaining population (many too poor to leave) faced a rapidly rising water from below.

Every once in a while, a gasp of recognition would come up from the group. “If that’s a ball park, then it must be Tulane. And if that’s Tulane, then that’s got to be Broadway. Can you zoom in here?”

A few clicks later, tiny pixels became larger squares, then recognizable shapes. “Wait! That’s our house,” screamed Kiki Houston, a denizen of the city’s Uptown neighborhood. “And the sycamore tree’s still standing!” For a few seconds, a sense of hope electrified the group as we saw a pixelated likeness of a familiar New Orleans scene: a fleeting image of home.

After days of dread and evacuation, after days of round-the-clock coverage and rumors, that little Photoshop zoom provided just a bit of hope, something to get us through the mind-numbing hours of disaster coverage, press conferences and a death toll that will only climb in the coming days.

As time passed, the audience thinned, but a few of us stayed around to look at more of the helicopter pics — images of highway bridges dismantled by waves, boats tossed inland like bath toys, submerged houses visible only by roof crests clad in rainbow-colored shingles.

Abstracted to pure geometry, there was something oddly beautiful about some of the pictures. But the huddled families on the roofs, a single abandoned car on the broken roadbed brought the tragedy home.

The Republicans in the House are likely to pass a continuing resolution keeping government running for the time being that includes $3.7 billion in offset funding for disaster aid. The Senate’s measure contained $6.9 billion. The latest news is that Rep. Louise Slaughter failed to get the Democratic proposal into the resolution, making it likely that either the House will fail the pass the resolution (many Republicans don’t support it because it doesn’t cut enough spending), increasing the risk of shutdown, or the Senate will stay in session next week and pass it with more disaster aid, forcing it back to the House, where it could fail again.

This is a great way to fund a government, right?

I imagine that the GOP is betting that obstructionism and a potential shutdown will be blamed on “Congress,” generically, and they have learned that they can absorb that hatred and turn it into voter cynicism that leads to increased support for conservatives who hate the government. Reid and the Democrats, meanwhile, will probably cave at the last second to avoid a shutdown. And everyone will say, “oh dear, what is wrong with Washington,” and the answer to that question will remain “Eric Cantor.”

UPDATE: Well, the other problem is “John Boehner,” who is just very bad at his job. The continuing resolution failed 195-230, with Democrats holding out due to the FEMA funding mess and dozens of Republicans voting no because Boehner has no control over them.

Of course Rick Perry doesn’t want to see Texas burn, so it is rational of him to ignore his rhetorical distaste for the federal government and demand that it help. And Texas could use the help, because Perry and the Republicans who control all three branches of Texas government have severely slashed the budget of the Texas Forest Service.

Perry’s fanatical opposition to raising revenue to close Texas’ budget gap meant that his allies in the Legislature had to find creative ways to cut costs, like cutting $34 million over the next two years from the agency that fights wildfires. The Forest Service is mostly volunteer-based, and the cuts will largely affect the state’s assistance grants to buy volunteer departments the tools they need to fight fires.

The Forest Service was appropriated $117.7 million for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. That is not enough to cover the expense of fighting the fires currently burning across the state. For the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which began this month, the agency was appropriated $83 million.

The state has already approved supplemental spending to pay for firefighting that has already taken place, which is also $61 million short of what is needed. So, in other words, the budget intentionally appropriates less money than everyone knows the Forest Service will actually need in order to maintain the illusion of fiscal responsibility. And the Republicans will demand more federal money to make up the gap. While decrying federal spending.

Ken Layne draws a connection between gutting the Forest Service budget and the growing trend of municipal budget slashing done primarily to prove seriousness about the moral necessity of “austerity” in these Tough Times. But Perry’s not allowing everything to go to hell, like the people of Costa Mesa, Calif., so much as he’s requiring fiscal irresponsibility to pay for very basic services, like putting out fires. No new taxes and balanced budgets until it turns out we need money really bad!

The shortfalls in FEMA’s disaster aid account have been obvious to lawmakers on Capitol Hill for months — and privately acknowledged to them by FEMA — but the White House has opted against asking for more money, riling many lawmakers.

“Despite the fact that the need … is well known,” Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and David Price, D-N.C., wrote the administration last month, “it unfortunately appears that no action is being taken by the administration.” The lawmakers chair the panel responsible for FEMA’s budget.

FEMA now admits the disaster aid shortfall could approach $5 billion for the upcoming budget year, and that’s before accounting for Irene.

As a result, funds to help states and local governments rebuild from this year’s tornadoes, as well as past disasters like hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the massive Tennessee floods of last spring, have been frozen. Instead, FEMA is only paying for the “immediate needs” of disaster-stricken communities, which include debris removal, food, water and emergency shelter.

“Going into September being the peak part of hurricane season, and with Irene, we didn’t want to get to the point where we would not have the funds to continue to support the previous impacted survivors as well as respond to the next disaster,” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate told reporters at the White House on Monday.

Republicans controlling the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate may be headed toward a battle over whether to cut spending elsewhere in the budget to pay for tornado and hurricane aid.

A top leader in the tea party-driven House says that chamber will find those offsetting spending cuts. The Senate, however, is likely to take advantage of a little-noticed provision in the recently passed debt limit and budget deal that permits Congress to pass several billion dollars in additional FEMA disaster aid without budget cuts elsewhere.

“We will find the money if there is a need for additional money,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told Fox News on Monday. “But those monies are not unlimited, and we have said we have to offset that.”

But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who presided over a recent hearing on disaster costs, says the number and cost of disasters have grown dramatically over the past few years.

“If (Cantor) believes that we can nip and tuck at the rest of the federal budget and somehow take care of disasters, he’s totally out of touch with reality,” the No. 2 Senate Democrat said Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the administration requested $1.8 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund, despite pent-up demands for much more. Appropriations for last year totaled four times that amount.

FEMA estimates that the request still left the disaster fund short by $2 billion to $4.8 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. Those are figures the agency provided to Congress this spring — before Irene or the tornadoes that destroyed huge swaths of Joplin, Mo., or beat up the South.

With recovery operations from Irene still in the early stages, FEMA spokesman Rachel Racusen said it is too early to know whether that projected shortfall has increased or by how much.

“It’s just too soon to know what any uninsured losses will be,” Racusen said.

“Even though the president himself said that we are going to do everything we can to help these communities rebuild, the rhetoric has not matched reality, and the Disaster Relief Fund is running out of money,” Aderholt said.

The likely vehicle for replenishing the disaster account is the homeland security spending bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The House passed the measure in early June, but the Senate has yet to act.

A House-Senate collision over disaster aid would risk further delays in replenishing dangerously low FEMA disaster accounts.

“It’s too early to tell what the damage assessment will be and what next steps may need to be taken,” said Meg Reilly, a spokeswoman for the White House budget office.

It’s hardly the first time that longer-term rebuilding projects like schools and sewer systems have been frozen out to make sure there’s money to provide disaster victims with immediate help with food, water and shelter. But it’s frustrating to communities like Nashville, Tenn., which is rebuilding from last year’s historic floods.

The Obama White House is just the latest administration to lowball disaster relief requests. Over the past two decades, Congress has approved $130 billion for FEMA’s disaster account. But the bulk of that money, $110 billion, has been provided as emergency funding in addition to the annual budget.

Associated Press writer Alicia Caldwell contributed to this story.