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Hutzler had been wheeled into Room 7305, a spacious room on the west-side hallway with two televisions, a clock, and three roommates, including Rose Savoie, another elderly lady. Isbell knew Hutzler from repeated stays and fondly called her “Miss Alice.” To Isbell, Miss Alice looked perky, even with the stress of the move. “Perky” was relative. Hutzler suffered from heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and a stroke that had left her partially paralyzed. Now she was recovering from pneumonia and bedsores contracted at a nursing home. The fact that she would likely survive to make it back there meant, Isbell knew, a great deal to her attentive, loving family. Isbell passed a reassuring message to Hutzler’sdaughter: “Tell her she’s here, and I’m going to take very good care of her.”
    That night, LifeCare appeared to have made the right bet by moving patients out of the single-story hospital in St. Bernard Parish. The National Weather Serviceupgraded its hurricane watch for New Orleans to a warning delivered in an eerie all-caps bulletin, a format designed for thearchaic Teletype: “ THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT KATRINA IS EXPECTED TO BE AN INTENSE AND DANGEROUS HURRICANE HEADING TOWARD THE NORTH CENTRAL GULF COAST … AND THIS HAS TO BE TAKEN VERY SERIOUSLY .” Heavy rains were expected to begin in twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER 3
DAY ONE
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2005
    ON SUNDAY MORNING, Katrina’s huge, Technicolor swirl filled the Gulf of Mexico on television screens throughout Memorial Medical Center. The Category Five storm packed the greatest intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Dire forecasts shocked even the most seasoned hands. “ MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS … PERHAPS LONGER ,” the National Weather Service’s New Orleans office warned. Katrina was “ A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH ,” certain to strike within twelve to twenty-four hours. “ AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL … LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. […] POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS … AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS .”
    Local leaders appeared on-screen to tell residents they needed to leave and leave now. The grim-faced president of a parish near New Orleans warned those who intended to stay to buy an ax, pick, or hammer sothey could hack their way to their rooftops and not die in their attics like many Hurricane Betsy unfortunates had. He told them to “remember the old ways” and fill their upstairs bathtubs with water; after the storm that would be the only source for drinking, bathing, and flushing toilets.
    The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, didn’t give his residents advice about the old ways. He ordered them to leave. At around ten a.m., he signed a mandatory, immediate evacuation order for the city. The order had been delayed by many precious hours, he would later admit, as his staff attempted to resolve logistical and legal questions,including whether he had the legal authority to issue it; as far as he knew, no previous New Orleans mayor had mandated an evacuation, although state law allowed the governor, parish presidents, and, by extension, him to do so.
    Nagin read his order aloud to the public at a press conference with Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. He stood in a white polo shirt before the inscrutable New Orleans city seal, on which a wriggling green form prowled beneath a figure that suggested the Roman sea god Neptune. An amphora under the crook of his arm was tipped, its contents gushing. “The storm surge most likely will topple our levee system,” Nagin warned. “We are facing a storm that most of us have feared.” Flooding, Blanco added, could reach fifteen to twenty feet.
    While the mayor commanded everyone to leave, many didn’t have cars or other