.Tuesday, Sept. 6

Mayor Nagin orders a forced evacuation of New Orleans. Police and National Guard forces go door-to-door to usher an estimated 10,000 holdouts into boats and helicopters.

The Associated Press reports that hundreds of firefighters who have volunteered to assist in hurricane relief efforts "have instead been playing cards, taking classes on the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel for days while they await orders. Some have been waiting for four days. FEMA's Tony Russell says only that the agency is trying to deploy the firefighters as quickly as possible but that it us unsure where to send them -- FEMA "wants to make certain they are sent to the right places," he says. Meanwhile, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that approximately 1,000 firefighters, many of whom thought they had volunteered to be emergency workers, were instead being trained in Atlanta to be public relations officers for FEMA.

FEMA denies journalists' requests to ride in rescue boats as they search for storm victims. An agency spokesperson tells newswire service Reuters, "We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media."

With the Army Corps of Engineers pumping water out of the New Orleans via the 17th Street Canal, the floodwaters are beginning to drop. Mayor Nagin estimates that 60 percent of the city remains under water. "Even in areas where the water was as high as the rooftops, I started to see parts of the buildings," he says after taking an aerial tour. "I'm starting to see rays of light."

Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barbara Mikulski call for FEMA director Brown to resign. They also introduce legislation that would separate FEMA from the Homeland Security Department, restoring it to being an independent Cabinet-level federal agency. Meanwhile, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tells President Bush she thinks Brown should be fired. According to Pelosi, Bush thanks her for her suggestion.

Responding to criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush volunteers to lead an investigation into the relief effort. Bush also announces that Vice President Dick Cheney will tour the devastated region on Thursday -- a week and a half after the hurricane struck.

.Wednesday, Sept. 7

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Dr. Julie Gerberding announces that sewage-related bacteria in the New Orleans floodwaters are at 10 times the maximum allowable level and warns those still in the city not to touch the water.

The White House announces that it will request Congress to approve $51.8 billion in supplemental hurricane-relief funding, in addition to the $10.5 billion that went through the previous Friday. Press secretary Scott McClellan says $50 billion of the supplemental request will go to FEMA, $1.4 billion will go to the Defense Department, and $400 million will go to the Army Corps of Engineers.

NBC's Brian Williams reports that he and his film crew have been prevented from filming members of the National Guard at work in New Orleans, and that a member of the local police aimed her gun at several members of the media who were reporting on the relief effort.

Without consulting congressional Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert announce that a bipartisan joint congressional committee will investigate the hurricane relief effort. Republicans would have the majority on such a committee, allowing them to determine the focus and scope of the investigation.

At the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention of America in Miami, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean says that race played a role in the government's hurricane response efforts: "We must ... come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not."

.Thursday, Sept. 8

President Bush, citing a national emergency, signs an executive order suspending the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, effectively allowing reconstruction efforts in storm-ravaged areas to pay workers less than prevailing local wages.

Time magazine raises questions about FEMA director Brown's résumé, noting discrepancies in online profile and his official biography and suggesting that the Bush administration inflated his credentials.

The state of Mississippi has recorded 201 deaths resulting from the storm, and Louisiana has recorded 83, bringing the total death toll near 290.

.Friday, Sept. 9

The Bush administration removes FEMA director Brown from his role as the head of hurricane relief efforts. Brown is still head of FEMA, but the Coast Guard's chief of staff, Vice Adm. Thad Allen, will oversee the federal response to the storm. Of his immediate plans, Brown says, "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and, maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims."

Officials in New Orleans announce a "zero access" media policy for New Orleans. The announcement is made by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director; Ebbert justifies the ban by saying that they consider photographing corpses to be improper.

Vice President Cheney arrives in the Gulf Coast region. While the vice president is answering questions on live television, a local doctor who lost his home yells out, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney," a reference to the comment Cheney made to Sen. Patrick Leahy in 2004.

Relief workers in Houston announce that they have contained a viral outbreak that leaves hundreds of evacuees reporting vomiting and diarrhea. An estimated 700 evacuees are treated for the symptoms, and 40 evacuees remain quarantined.

In response to the zero-access media policy in New Orleans, CNN files suit against FEMA director Brown. CNN also files for a temporary restraining order against the policy, which U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issues.

Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell criticizes the hurricane relief effort during an interview with Barbara Walters for ABC's "20/20." "When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own. These are people who don't have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing -- but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor," Powell says.

.Saturday, Sept. 10

With CNN's lawsuit pending and Judge Ellison considering issuing a permanent injunction against the zero-access media policy in New Orleans, Joint Task Force Katrina spokesperson Col. Christian deGraff announces that it will not enforce the policy. The task force, deGraff says, "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts."

The total number of hurricane-related deaths climbs to 372, with 154 confirmed dead in the New Orleans area.

The former associate dean at the University of Southern California Law School, donating her services to help people with emergency legal needs, arrives in Gulfport, Miss. She and other legal volunteers end up spending most of their time trying to track down a mobile kitchen and provide basic human needs. "It was day 13 after Katrina struck, and no one was coordinating the relief effort in one of the poorest communities along the coast. We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official," Karen A. Lash wrote later.

.Sunday, Sept. 11

Rescue and recovery personnel find 45 bodies in the flooded Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, bringing state's death toll near 280.

.Monday, Sept. 12

Michael Brown resigns his directorship of FEMA. The White House appoints the head of FEMA's preparedness division, R. David Paulison, as Brown's interim successor.

President Bush denies that race played a role in hurricane relief: "When those Coast Guard choppers, many of who were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin ... The storm didn't discriminate, and neither did the recovery effort."

Water levels in New Orleans drop substantially and the streets become visible in even the most flooded neighborhoods, which only two days before were under 6 to 8 feet of water. A Guard staff sergeant in the city's Lower 9th Ward says, "The water's gone down so fast, we can't keep up with it. It's like the whole place dried up overnight." But many of the city's buildings, particularly those made of wood, are ruined after being under water for days and will have to be destroyed.

Rescue workers uncover four more bodies in Mississippi and 82 more in Louisiana, bringing the hurricane's total death toll to 513.

.Tuesday, Sept. 13

10:35 a.m. At a press conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in the White House's East Room, President Bush acknowledges some personal responsibility for the failures of the hurricane relief effort: "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong."

Local authorities arrest the owners of St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish and charge them with 34 counts of negligent homicide for failing to evacuate their patients, 34 of whom perished in the flooding. Authorities offered to evacuate the facility's inhabitants before the storm, but the owners, Mable and Salvador Mangano, declined the offer.

Louisiana's Department of Health announces that the state's official death toll has risen to 423, a marked increase from the previous day's tally of 279. The total number of hurricane-related deaths in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi is currently 657. Estimates of the total cost of the hurricane's damage range from slightly more than $100 billion to close to $200 billion.

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