City Adrift

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based organization that does investigative reporting and research on public policy issues. Since 1990, the Center has released more than 300 investigative reports and fifteen books. It has received the prestigious George Polk Award and more than twenty other awards from national organizations, including PEN USA, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Hurricane Katrina was a stunning example of complete civic breakdown. Beginning on August 29, 2005, the world watched in horror as every system that might have protected New Orleans failed. Levees and canals buckled, pouring more than 100 billion gallons of floodwater into the city. Botched communications crippled rescue operations. Buses that might have evacuated thousands never came. Hospitals lost power and patients lay suffering in darkness and stifling heat. At least 1,400 Louisianans died in Hurricane Katrina, more than half of them from New Orleans, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced. How could all of this have happened in twenty-first-century America? And could it all happen again? To answer these questions, the Center for Public Integrity commissioned seven seasoned journalists to travel to New Orleans and investigate the storms aftermath. In this book, they present their findings.