Chronology of a Catastrophe

• Just after midnight, local firefighters are told to stand down and head for refuge.
• Buoys in the Gulf of Mexico detect waves in excess of 40 feet.
• Police spend the night answering some medical calls, including taking some cardiac patients to hospitals, until they too are pulled off the streets around 4:45 a.m.
• Katrina makes landfall in Louisiana around 6 a.m.
• At around 6:30 a.m., much of New Orleans loses power. Phone service fails a few hours later.
• Around the south, National Guard and other resources prepare for the storm's aftermath. Search and rescue efforts will fall to the National Guard, the Coast Guard and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. FEMA stages medical teams, rescue squads and food and water supplies.
• Katrina strikes New Orleans around 8 a.m., with sustained winds of 135 mph and a storm surge of 18 feet. Reports come almost immediately of waves topping levees.
• At 8:14, the National Weather Service reports a levee breach along the Industrial Canal. A floodwall along Lake Pontchartrain gives out as well. More failures follow.
• Holes are torn in the Superdome's roof.
• From Baton Rouge, Brown, hours after the storm, asks Chertoff for 1,000 FEMA personnel, but gives them two days to arrive. Assets from the U.S. military's Northern Command (Northcom) are also positioned in the Gulf states, but FEMA's only request to the military is for six helicopters.
• FEMA also tells emergency personnel from other states not to come to the affected area without coordination by state and local officials.
• Bush declares Louisiana and Mississippi major disaster areas, freeing up federal funds.
• By midafternoon, looting is being reported, and fires break out.
• By 2 p.m., there have been at least 100 distress calls from residents of the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans. Within another few hours, hundreds are reported trapped by rising floodwaters. In St. Bernard Parish, the water level reaches the second story of the courthouse.
• Police officers, firefighters and private citizens with boats begin conducting rescues. The Coast Guard also moves quickly, saving more than 1,000. As the storm passes, additional teams fan out to search for survivors. They work into the night.
• The Red Cross predicts "the largest recovery operation [it] has ever attempted."
• Blanco asks Bush for federal assistance, telling him, "We need everything you've got."

Tuesday, August 30

• With 50,000-plus left homeless by the storm, city officials debate opening the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where EMS EXPO had been held, as another evacuation shelter. The center is not a designated shelter under the emergency plan.
• Nearly 5,000 more National Guardsmen are deployed following a request from Blanco.
• In Mississippi, the death toll is announced to exceed 100.
• NAEMT President-elect Jerry Johnston tells EMS providers not to self-dispatch to affected areas.
• Water levels continue to rise throughout New Orleans, including around the Superdome. Hospital evacuations begin.
• 9-1-1 call takers working on the second floor of police headquarters are reportedly moved to tears by calls coming from those trapped in attics and on roofs by rising floodwaters.
• Police communications fail, and police headquarters is evacuated.
• Four are confirmed dead at the Superdome, with 500 more special-needs patients in dire need of evacuation.
• News sources report that the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security is keeping the Red Cross from assisting at the Superdome, for fear of encouraging more victims to descend on the overloaded facility.
• FEMA requests additional military ships and helicopters.
• Local officials request anyone with a boat to help in rescue efforts.
• Looting grows, with some police officers and firefighters reportedly joining in. One looter shoots a police officer.
• Some police officers do not appear for duty.
• The National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers begin planning repairs for multiple levee fractures, but can't say how long it will take. Most local personnel and contractors have been evacuated.
• The Convention Center is opened to rescuees and other displaced, but with no supplies and few officers to maintain order.
• Chertoff declares an "incident of national significance" and activates the National Response Plan. He formally names Brown the lead federal official in charge of Katrina response, giving him-36 hours after the storm hit-authority to act independently.
• Late that afternoon, Bush announces he will cut his monthlong vacation short and return to Washington the next day.
• By this time, FEMA has moved or is moving 23 DMATs, 10 USAR task forces and two Incident Support Teams into affected areas, along with food, water and medical supplies. Other resources come from the Coast Guard, numerous federal departments and several states' National Guards.
• Nagin announces that efforts to stop water flowing in at the 17th Street levee breach have failed, meaning rising waters will soon overwhelm the city's capacity to pump them out. Eighty percent of the city will soon be under water.
• Jefferson Parish officials plead for power packs to keep their sewer system working; these had been promised by FEMA after a 2004 hurricane drill. "I've got a sewage problem that's going to be a medical disaster like we've never seen in this country," warns parish emergency chief Walter Maestri.
• Rising waters stop the delivery of food to the Superdome. Blanco calls for evacuation of the damaged and deteriorating facility, to begin by Wednesday evening, but officials have ongoing problems finding buses and drivers to do it.
• Texas approves opening the Houston Astrodome to displaced Louisianans. FEMA promises buses to convey them to Houston.

Wednesday, August 31