9 a.m. Katrina's eye passes to the east of New Orleans. Wind speeds are estimated at 135 mph, and the storm is heading out of town -- toward the Mississippi coast -- at a rate of about 15 mph.

In New Orleans, flooding is reported in several places. The Times-Picayune -- providing continuous updates on its blog -- says that water has risen to over 6 feet in some parts of Orleans and St. Bernard parishes. The city's telephone and electric grids are failing.

10:15 a.m. Mayor Nagin tells the "Today" show that his city is "still not out of the woods as it relates to that worst-case scenario," but that overall, "it looks as though everyone is pretty safe here -- so just stay tuned to all the news reports and I'm sure that we're going to get through this OK." Nagin also says that the city has enough provisions for people to stay in the Superdome for "four to five days. And then if it has to extend beyond that, we're going to -- we're basically counting on the federal government to supply us with what we need."

11 a.m. FEMA director Brown arrives in Baton Rouge. It's around this time -- five hours after the storm hits the coast -- that Brown sends out his first alert to the Department of Homeland Security requesting extra personnel. The memo, to DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, does not express much urgency: Brown asks for 1,000 DHS staffers to come to disaster areas within two days, and 2,000 within seven days.

Noon: At a town hall meeting at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in El Mirage, Ariz., President Bush says: "Our Gulf Coast is getting hit and hit hard. I want the folks there on the Gulf Coast to know that the federal government is prepared to help you when the storm passes. I want to thank the governors of the affected regions for mobilizing assets prior to the arrival of the storm to help citizens avoid this devastating storm ... When the storm passes, the federal government has got assets and resources that we'll be deploying to help you. In the meantime, America will pray -- pray for the health and safety of all our citizens." Bush also mentions that he phoned DHS secretary Chertoff that morning -- but the topic wasn't the hurricane, it was illegal aliens.

The White House declares disaster areas in the affected regions of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These declarations constitute a legal promise of financial aid to local governments: "For a period of up to 72 hours, Federal funding is available at 100 percent of the total eligible costs for emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance," the White House says.

Meanwhile in Louisiana, it becomes clear to officials in St. Bernard Parish that the breach in the Industrial Canal levee is serious. The area floods almost immediately. Henry Rodriguez, the president of the parish, will later tell NPR, "It came up so fast, in about, I'd say, 30 minutes, we had eight feet of water on our first floor." On its Web site -- in urgent red -- the parish reports, "Estimated 40,000 Homes are flooded."

2 p.m. The city confirms that another levee -- this one along the 17th Street Canal, on the northwest side of the city -- has failed. There are reports of flooding in the nearby Lakeview neighborhood. It's unclear when two levees along the London Avenue canal -- the final two levees in the city to fail -- actually succumb. Al Naomi, who manages New Orleans' levees for the Army Corps of Engineers, later tells the Times-Picayune that these two also probably fail sometime on Monday morning, meaning that by the time the storm leaves the city, New Orleans' critical levees have already been breached.

Around 3 p.m. The storm subsides in the city, and it's difficult for residents, as well as the media, to assess how New Orleans has held up. Damage caused by the high winds -- broken windows, downed trees and power lines, overturned cars -- is widespread. Yet compared to what some officials and experts had been predicting -- "Armageddon," as one meteorologist had told the New York Times -- parts of the city, especially those of most interest to the media, appear to have come through the storm unscathed. The French Quarter, for instance, looks fine. Some people there gather outside bars to take in the breezy, beautiful weather.

But officials monitoring the levees realize that disaster is about to strike. The Army Corp's Al Naomi calls the state emergency headquarters in Baton Rouge to inform officials of a catastrophic situation in the city. Water from the increasingly large breach in the levee at the 17th Street Canal -- it ended up being 200 feet wide -- is pouring out, flooding the city center. It is this breach that will inundate the city of New Orleans over the next day, eventually making it part of Lake Pontchartrain. But for reasons that aren't known, state officials do not heed his warning. Nobody sounds the alarm that the city may soon be flooded. Indeed, Mary Landrieu, Louisiana's Democratic senator, will later tell Newsweek that the mood in the state's headquarters wasn't one of panic. "We were saying, 'Thank you, God,' because the experts were telling the governor it could have been even worse."

Meanwhile, communications failures hamper rescue and relief efforts. Radio channels are overwhelmed, cellphone networks are down, and police, fire and rescue workers are often unable to communicate with each other.

By Monday evening, neither federal nor state officials appear to have registered the scale of the disaster. After a second Medicare speech in California, President Bush makes no public statement on what's happened in New Orleans. But he talks on the phone with Gov. Blanco, who said, "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got."

Later, Blanco will be faulted for not specifying what exactly she needs -- active-duty troops, who would be under the president's command, or more National Guard troops, whom she would direct. "She wouldn't know the 82nd Airborne from the Harlem Boys' Choir," Newsweek will quote a state official as saying. Blanco's vague request will prove to be a key part of a struggle between federal and state officials as the week progresses, one that contributes to the inadequate response.

But if Blanco is vague, Bush is uninterested. Also from Newsweek: "There are a number of steps Bush could have taken, short of a full-scale federal takeover, like ordering the military to take over the pitiful and (by now) largely broken emergency communications system throughout the region. But the president ... went to bed."

On television, Blanco and FEMA director Brown say they're concerned about flooding, but both seem to be referring to the early flooding in the city's east, not the flooding of the west and central areas caused by the massive breach in the 17th Street Canal. Brown reports that his aid teams are moving aid into the city, and Blanco tells about Coast Guard rescues of people stranded on rooftops. Neither one discusses looting, which has begun in some parts of the city.

It's unclear whether either of them knows or understands the disaster posed by the breached levees. Communications on the ground are inadequate and the media was erratic and at times erroneous in its reporting on the levees. On TV, neither mentions that New Orleans -- where waters are rising by a foot per hour in some parts -- will soon be inundated.

.Tuesday, Aug. 30

Early morning: Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will later say that he awakens to relatively positive news from the Gulf. "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.'" It's only on Tuesday afternoon that Chertoff finally learns that "there was no possibility of plugging the gap [in the levees] and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city." Other federal officials appear equally clueless about the danger posed by the levees. At a press conference Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Bill Lokey, a FEMA coordinator, says, "I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening."

In fact, not a single newspaper headline says that New Orleans dodged a bullet, although some did say that New Orleans had avoided taking the brunt of the storm. The Times-Picayune (available only online after the storm knocked out its press) was far from reassuring. Its front page headline -- -- screams "CATASTROPHIC: LAKEVIEW LEVEE BREACH THREATENS TO INUNDATE CITY." (Here's a PDF of the front page).

11 a.m. President Bush commemorates the 60th anniversary of V-J Day with a speech in San Diego. The speech focuses on Iraq; Bush compares his efforts there to FDR's with the Germans and the Japanese in WWII. Bush mentions the hurricane just once, saying that that federal, state and local officials are working side-by-side to rebuild the damaged areas. He does not indicate that he's aware of the possibility of catastrophic flooding.

At a press briefing, spokesman Scott McClellan reports that the president has decided to cut short his vacation and leave for Washington on Wednesday in order to monitor federal hurricane relief efforts. McClellan does not suggest that anyone at the White House is aware of the flood problem.

Afternoon: Crime and looting increase in New Orleans. Police officers -- who report being completely cut off from their commanders -- say they're powerless to stop the looters, who are stealing food, water and much else. The Times-Picayune, which is forced to evacuate its main city newsroom during the day, spots "one New Orleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inch flat screen television." One store's entire gun collection is taken. New Orleans City Council president Oliver Thomas worries that the looting will prompt widespread anarchy in the city. "Some people broke into drug stores and stole the drugs off the shelves. It is looting times five. I'm telling you, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah," he says. One office is shot in the head by looters; he survives.

It's unclear how many National Guard units are in the city at this point. Throughout the state, about 6,000 were available for Katrina response. Observers of the anarchy say that there are clearly too few troops.

6:30 p.m. The Army Corps of Engineers' efforts to fix the city's breached levees have failed, Mayor Nagin tells a local radio station. At a press conference, he estimates that 80 percent of the city is underwater, and he warns that some areas remaining dry may also soon flood.

Nagin urges people to leave the city, but for many, especially the mostly black residents of the city's poor neighborhoods, getting out is impossible. Many of these people, thought to number close to 100,000, do not have cars, and no public or emergency transportation is available. Instead, they flee -- sometimes trudging through miles of water -- to the Superdome, where the population swells to more than 25,000.

The situation at the hot and fetid Superdome is deteriorating rapidly. After a tour there, Gov. Blanco calls conditions "very, very desperate." The toilets have stopped working, and people are concerned for their safety, as there are some people at the Dome "who do not have any regard for others." Blanco urges an evacuation of the Dome, but outlines no plans for how or when such an evacuation will occur.

One plan is to move people to Houston's Astrodome, but officials lack enough buses for the large-scale evacuation. Louisiana officials demand more buses from FEMA; FEMA grants the request. But for reasons that aren't yet clear, the buses don't come. "We'd call and say: 'Where are the buses?' " Col. Jeff Smith, of Louisiana's Homeland Security Department, will tell the Washington Post. "They have a tracking system and they'd say: 'We sent 349.' But we didn't see them."

To accommodate people escaping their flooded homes and hotel rooms, city officials also open the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and tell residents to collect there for shelter. But there appears to be little awareness among federal and state officials, or the news media, of this plan. No count of the population at the convention center is available, and it's unclear whether any plans exist to provide food, water, medical attention or buses to the center.

A similar situation exists at an overpass of Interstate 10, where rescue helicopters have been dropping people they've collected from rooftops. The official plan for the convention center -- whose plan it is to use the place as a designated shelter, and who is responsible for keeping it safe and secure -- is, at this point, not known.

On CNN, Nagin says his city is "actively working on a plan to relocate those individuals to a much better facility, but unfortunately in the city of New Orleans, with 80-plus percent of it under water, we don't have a lot of options locally." He estimates that people will remain at the Superdome for at least a week. Nagin also says that he wishes that the more than 3,000 Louisiana National Guard troops who are stationed in Iraq were available to help in his city.

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