Foreword
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall at 6:10 a.m. on the Louisiana coast as a strong Category 4 storm. Two days earlier, the National Hurricane Center had warned of potential devastation, saying that the City of New Orleans could be "uninhabitable for weeks." Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) asked President Bush to declare a state of emergency for the State of Louisiana. He did so, from his Crawford, Texas, home, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief efforts. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) ordered a mandatory evacuation of…
