The bad news coming out of New Orleans 20 years ago this week was endless. And awful.

Videos of an entire city that looked like a giant had picked it up and dropped it into Lake Pontchartrain. People on rooftops waving frantically for help. The site of the Superdome in shreds.

At my home in Baton Rouge, just a couple of miles from LSU, the damage from Hurricane Katrina was minor but the impact of the disaster was still quite visceral. Ambulance sirens and the chopping of helicopter blades could be heard all day and all night as victims were being ferried out of the shattered city to LSU’s campus, which had become a temporary shelter for refugees from the storm.

Out of this slow-rolling nightmare, this ghastly parade of death and devastation, there were few positive stories to be found

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