How Did This Happen?

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As Katrina gained strength, researchers at L.S.U.'s Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes ran the numbers through their storm-surge models. Around 7 p.m. Saturday, on the giant screen looming over the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge, they posted the sum of all fears: New Orleans would go under. Everyone knew what that meant: a major water rescue of untold thousands. The next morning, with the storm less than 24 hours away, the team talked to federal health officials about the potential for disease from the rising waters. At midday Sunday, according to TIME's Cathy Booth Thomas, the L.S.U. team informed a roomful of disaster officialsfrom FEMA and the Red Cross to the military and National Guardthat they were looking at a "significant event" with waves washing over the levees in central New Orleans. By 8 p.m. Monday, the first bad news came into the Operations Center. Staff from a nursing home reported that water had been rising at the rate of one foot an hourthe first sign that the levees might have given way.

AFTER THE STORM

The first 72 hours after a disaster is the "golden" period. That is when victims should start receiving food, water, ice and medication. "If you are not visible within 72 hours, you will have chaos," says Joe Myers, who was Florida's emergency director from 1993 to 2001. That was a lesson from Hurricane Andrew, when there was looting in parts of Miami-Dade County for at least a month after the storm. "Every minute counts. Every second counts," says Mayor Joseph Riley, who led Charleston, S.C., through Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

But in New Orleans, where officials initially thought they had been spared the worst, the hesitation seemed to start locally and then infect the chain of command all the way to Washington. Some New Orleans police officers turned in their badges, unwilling to work in the lawless city. On Tuesday, when parts of the city were already under 20 feet of water, the Pentagon deployed five ships to the Gulf--four from Norfolk, Va., four days away. On Friday, 6,500 National Guard finally arrived to help restore order.

On Wednesday, Gregory Breerwood, operations chief for the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Wall Street Journal that none of the plans had "ever included an event of this magnitude." But Hurricane Pam, an elaborate federally sponsored simulation conducted just one year ago, had predicted an eerily similar scenario with tens of thousands of deaths. One problem, in retrospect, is that no one had wanted to believe it. "I'll be honest with you. I'm the researcher, I'm doing all the models, and sometimes I would say to myself, 'Am I Chicken Little? Could this really happen?'" says Wolshon. "Even I was in denial, and I was the one running all the numbers."

Some of the efforts made at first seemed oddly ad hoc. Two days after the storm, the Department of Health and Human Services e-mailed cruise lines to ask whether they might help with rescue and relief efforts. Industry officials had no idea where their ships would anchor, how passengers would board or where the boats would get food and potable water. It would have been a reasonable idea if it had been vetted months in advance.