The complete breakdown of civil society

I just heard someone on the ground in New Orleans on the radio describe the situation there as "the complete breakdown of civil society."

Words fail me.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The mayor of New Orleans issued a "desperate SOS" Thursday as violence disrupted efforts to rescue people still trapped in the flooded city and evacuate thousands of displaced residents living amid corpses and human waste. ...

The evacuation of patients from Charity Hospital was halted after the facility came under sniper fire, while groups of armed men wandered the streets, buildings smoldered and people picked through stores for what they could find. ...

[CNN correspondent Chris Lawrence reports,] "There are multiple people dying at the convention center," Lawrence said. "There was an old woman, dead in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over her, pushed up against a wall. Horrible, horrible conditions.

"We saw a man who went into a seizure, literally dying right in front of us."