Hurricane Katrina devastated everything it touched, from Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana, but it was New Orleans, which survived the storm only to flood over the following days, that jolted the national psyche. The flood turned the Big Easy into a disaster zone. TV pictures across the globe showed people trapped on rooftops, sloshing knee-high past bloated corpses and sunken cars, old folk in wheelchairs, looters with grocery carts. Most people fled to far-flung places, many to stay for weeks and months. With 80 percent of New Orleans under water, the country that put men on the moon took five days to evacuate hospitals.
