"100 Hours After Stormfall"

The Anchoress has an excellent recap of the whole hurricane, flood, and aftermath. I suggest reading the whole thing.

Here it is.

Here is an excerpt:

It has been - essentially - just about 100 hours since Katrina struck land. By the time some of you will read this, perhaps it will be 120 hours.

In 100 or so hours, several things happened.

At first, the world thought New Orleans had “dodged a bullet.” We awoke to stories that Biloxi and Gulfport had taken terrible hits but New Orleans had been more or less spared. The whole nation seemed to breathe a settling sigh, imagining that FEMA would be on hand in Biloxi and Gulfport, the usual emergency services and aid people would do the usual emergency service and aid things, folks would get their power restored in a few days or weeks, we’d all send small checks and life would pretty much go on as usual. Heck, even after Katrina struck, Cindy Sheehan and her folk were talking merrily about “heading out to Tom DeLay’s house” (yes, the press had already left the story enough to cover her, again) and President Bush was seen addressing troops and plunking a guitar thinking - as everyone did - that the worst of Katrina was behind us. (Aside- I miss Karen Hughes. And Michael Gerson. They need to be back at W’s side. Please.)

Then…pumps and levees - designed to withstand a fast-moving catagory three storm and its aftereffects - stopped working, and what had seemed a managable disaster became a catastrophe of a scope and scale unseen in the recent history of the United States of America. A city destroyed, smaller cities are in trouble, too, but New Orleans is lost.

(Curtsy to Jonah Goldberg)