On the 28th of August, 2005, I was sitting at home in New York. Like most folks, I was watching the news reports about Hurricane Katrina, intrigued by the increasing size and power of this storm. The National Weather Bureau reports were amazing:\r\n \r\nURGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA \r\n1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005 \r\n\r\n...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED... \r\n\r\n.HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969. \r\n\r\nMOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. \r\n\r\nTHE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. \r\n\r\nHIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. \r\n\r\nAIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. \r\n\r\nPOWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS. \r\n\r\nTHE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED. \r\n\r\nAN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS. \r\n\r\nONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!\r\n\r\nClearly, this was going to be a storm of epic proportions. Remembering last season’s multiple impacts on Florida, I couldn’t help thinking of the devastation, and remembering how adamant I had been after those storms about how much good could have been done with a communications system such as the Unisys CommHub. Not one was deployed there, though the communications infrastructure was completely destroyed. I thought too about the devastation of the Tsunami in Indonesia, and how strongly I felt about trying to get one of the devices deployed there, too, to no avail.\r\n\r\nBut, on the 28th of August, I was only thinking…\r\n\r\n\r\nThe next morning August 29th, I watched from New York as even worse news was reported out of New Orleans:\r\n\r\nLevee breach floods Lakeview, Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park - \"A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new \'hurricane proof\' Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina\'s fiercest winds were well north.\"\r\n\r\nBut even then, the depth of the impact wasn’t clear to me. Like everyone else in the country, north of the Gulf Coast, I was shocked and saddened by the events, but was still just another observer. \r\n\r\nAs the stories of loss of communications began to come in, I knew that there was a way Unisys could help – by deploying the CommHub solution. \r\n\r\nOn the morning of August 30th, I sent an email to several folks within Unisys, asking whether anyone in the South had considered offering the CommHub to agencies or clients in the affected region. The only reply was from Wade Story, a CBA in the South Region, who indicated that he had forwarded my email to his peers in the affected area.\r\n\r\nAs that day and evening wore on, and as I saw more and more of the devastation, and heard more and more reports of a complete communications breakdown, I knew that I had to act. No doubt, no equivocation.\r\n\r\nThe morning of August 31st, I fired off a series of emails to Unisys Executive Leadership, indicating my intentions to go to New Orleans to deploy our solution there. I reached out to Cathy Adduci, who had recent contacts with the City of New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Technology. Cathy, in turn, contacted Cynthia Hall, a PSE focused on New Orleans. Cynthia had been forced to evacuate, and was in Birmingham, AL.\r\n\r\nCynthia reached out to Dwaine Hodges, a consultant to the Mayor’s Office in New Orleans, who said that they could use any help they could get.\r\n\r\nBy that time, I had had several email exchanges with executives Al Binford, Cathy Adduci, David Rovinsky and others, giving me full support on this mission. I called Juan Godoy, the primary Solution Architect for CommHub, and a close friend of sixteen years. Juan strongly agreed that we should go, and volunteered to join me. He then called David Milne, one of the key technical leads on the solution. David, recently a Captain in the National Guard, did not hesitate to join the team. We booked flights, and left the next morning for Houston.\r\n\r\nOnce we arrived in Houston, we learned that our friends at Fed-Ex had “lost our satellite gear. When we called them to track the shipments, even thought they had given us assurances of delivery in Baton Rouge, the “friendly” associate we spoke to said “I’m sorry you didn’t know there was hurricane down there” Best not to write what my reply was.\r\n\r\nWe then shifted in to Ranger-mode. Adapt and overcome. We began to reach out to all of our providers involved in the integration of the CommHub. We explained our dilemma, and asked for near-miracles. All of them came through for us. We arranged for overnight delivery of new equipment, but this time to Houston. To hedge our bets, we also went to an electronics retailer and purchased off-the-shelf wireless components and enclosures. We were prepared to create a home-grown version of the wireless elements of CommHub.\r\n\r\nBob Spruce,of GOIS, a Houston resident, managed to rent a generator for us. We had attempted to purchase one, but were informed that EVERY generator at Home Depot and Lowe’s had been shipped to Louisiana. Bob’s house also became the shipping point for all of our gear. He and his family were instrumental in helping us to finally launch our mission.\r\n\r\nWe also made contact with Lee Crump of Field Services. Lee, another Houston resident, had volunteered to join us on this mission, even after I explained to him the challenges we expected to face. Moreover, he actually drove to Baton Rouge a day early, expecting, as we did, to find our gear there. When he could find no place to stay in Baton Rouge, he drove back to Beaumont, Texas to wait for us.\r\n\r\nWe spent the remainder of the night of September 1st shopping for supplies in Houston. Power bars, water, more water, Camel-Back’s, waders, paper products and, of primary importance – hand sanitizer.\r\n\r\nAfter what proved to be our last decent dinner for well over a week – a selection of food from Chili’s – we retired for the night.\r\n\r\nThe next morning, September 2nd, we set about final errands while waiting for the new satellite gear to be delivered. We started with a good breakfast, which turned out to be our LAST hot meal (aside from MRE) for over a week. We filled our four cans with gas and loaded our gear. Early that morning, I received a call from Dwaine Hodges, pleading with me to get to Baton Rouge as quickly as possible, to meet with the State Office of Emergency Preparedness ahead of going in to New Orleans.\r\n\r\nI decided that I would leave Juan and Dave in Houston and head to Baton Rouge to meet with Dwaine. By that time, we had confirmation that the majority of the gear had arrived in Houston, so expected to be only an hour or less apart in getting to Baton Rouge. \r\n\r\nAnother great plan shot to hell.\r\n\r\nAs I drove East across I-10, I noticed vehicle after vehicle that were obviously heading into the disaster zone. Trucks of every size and type, loaded with cans of gasoline, cases of bottled water, generators, etc. It was almost like being a part of a loose-knit convoy – everyone on a similar mission to help. \r\n\r\nAs I arrived in Beaumont, Texas, I called Juan and Dave on their cellphones, and was assured that they not only had most of the equipment, but that they were only about 45 minutes behind me. I stopped in Beaumont to connect with Lee Crump, a Field Services Tech that had volunteered to go into New Orleans with us. Lee is a Houston resident, and lives only a short distance from George Bush International. I asked him to go back to Houston, and to wait there for the remaining equipment, then to join up with us in New Orleans.\r\n\r\nOnce back on the road, I felt energized, know that by now, Juan and Dave were only about a half hour behind, and we were moving quickly. I drove through Lake Charles, then Lafayette. Right through what was soon to become ground zero for Katrina’s sister – Hurricane Rita. \r\n\r\nI arrived in Baton Rouge around 4PM, and made my way to the Office of Emergency Preparedness, where I was to connect with Dwaine Hodges. The place was a madhouse. Military and civilian agencies of every kind were there. Heavily armed men and women, press, camera crews. Satellite trucks and helicopters. Cell coverage was non-existent, for the most part. It took almost an hour for Dwaine and me to find each other. No small challenge, since we’d never before met.\r\n\r\nDwaine escorted me in to the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Center – it was absolutely buzzing with activity, as could be expected. I met there briefly with the City Attorney of New Orleans, and with several members of the military, gaining some insight into the situation we faced. \r\n\r\nDuring the time I was waiting for Dwaine, I was also continually trying to call Juan and Dave. As I said the cell coverage was terrible, so I couldn’t get through. After an hour of trying, I finally did get a cell, and connected with them. More bad news. Between the time I passed Beaumont and the time they arrived – less than a half hour – there had been a double tractor/trailer accident on I-10. Both trucks had jack-knifed, blocking the Eastbound lane. Juan and Dave hadn’t moved an inch in over an hour and a half. This was a big setback, as we were losing light, and really didn’t want to deploy in the dark. There was very little order in New Orleans, and there was significant sniper activity still occurring. \r\n\r\nAs we waited for the boys, Dwaine introduced me to a group of six men from Sola Communications and Defense Dynamics. Sola had been contracted by the CIO of Lafayette, LA, to install solar powered satellite phones in New Orleans, in support of the Mayor’s Office. Defense Dynamics were Sola’s physical security team. I immediately clicked with these guys, because two of them were former Rangers. When I learned that they would be our escort into New Orleans, my comfort level increased considerably. These guys were armed to the teeth, and had recent combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Urban fighters. But, even then, none of us liked the idea of going into New Orleans in the dark. It was at this point Dwaine presented me with a Glock 17 9mm pistol. This was getting serious.\r\n\r\nAs the group of us waited for Juan and Dave, we stood at the edge of an open area being used as a heliport. We watched as several choppers were mounted by teams of police and military snipers equipped with night vision gear, going in to New Orleans to counter the mounting violence there. Their mission was very clear to us. We were all glad that they were on our side that night.\r\n\r\nFinally, around 8:30PM, I got a voicemail from Juan, saying that they were in Baton Rouge, and approaching the EOP facility. We still couldn’t directly connect on the cellphones, but we were able to leave and receive voicemails. Even after they were on-site, it was almost an hour before we found each other. Frustrating. Once we did, we had to have Dwaine “negotiate” with the State Police to refuel the trucks. By the time we were ready to roll, it was after 10PM.\r\n\r\nThe Defense Dynamics guys were real pro’s. We spent a few minutes discussing our convoy plans – them in the lead in their two vehicles, both with police lights, Juan and Dave behind them, with me in the rear. We used standard military tactical procedures – no bunching-up, at least 25 meters between vehicles. The DD guys made it clear that they would “address” any armed assault that we might encounter, and that we were only to stop if they did. \r\n\r\nBaton Rouge is about 80 miles from New Orleans. Once we were on I-10, we drove the entire way at an average of 100 MPH. The only stops were at three separate checkpoints, where, after verifying Dwaine’s credentials, we were waved through. The only question they asked was whether we had plenty of ammunition. One of the cops at the checkpoint closest to New Orleans central business district said “If anyone plays with you, play right back”. We knew what he meant. I instructed Juan and Dave to move their seats back as far as possible, so as to not present a clean profile in their windows as we drove in to the city. I jacked a round into the chamber of the Glock, and kept it on my lap, hoping I wouldn’t need to use it, but prepared to do so if necessary.\r\n\r\nAs we crossed the Mississippi River Bridge, we could see a giant fire raging along the riverfront. There had been an explosion at a chemical plant earlier that day, and the flames still covered an area that seemed to be several city blocks in size. Other than that, the city was in near total darkness. Occasional blue flashes from emergency vehicles and the glare of spotlights from helicopters were about all to be seen.\r\n\r\nWe got off the highway on to the surface roads, and I will admit to being more than a bit apprehensive for the first time. Up till now, there had been a sense of excitement, but this was down-right scary. Surreal doesn’t describe the scene. Debris for the hurricane was everywhere. Large pieces of buildings, glass, newspaper boxes, all in the street. It was an obstacle course. All that, plus that combat-ready alertness that I hadn’t felt in thirty years. Then we turned onto Loyola Street, and encountered the water. \r\n\r\nOur destination was the Hyatt Hotel, at Loyola and Poydras Streets, across from the Superdome. When we arrived there, we encountered no fewer than 100 National Guardsmen, in various states of alert. The DD guys immediately established a guard position, not at all comfortable with the way the NG were conducting themselves. There was little to no “light discipline”, which meant that any sniper with a desire to strike had plenty of targets to pick from. We elected to remain in the dark, on alert, until Dwaine had identified where we were to report. It should be noted here that we were now parked on the center divider on Loyola Street, because there was no less than a foot of water in the streets. We had to wade to get into the hotel.\r\n\r\nOnce we had our plan, we secured the trucks and went inside to scout out a location for our CommHub, and to meet the Chief Information Officer and his team. They were all sequestered in a small conference room on the 4th floor that had been their home for four days at this point. We explained our capabilities, and they were thrilled to have us there. \r\n\r\nBy now, it was after midnight. We rousted the Hyatt Engineer, Randy, and asked him to show us a place suitable to deploy our satellite dish. We needed unobstructed southern exposure, and hoped for some shelter for our electronics. Randy then took us to a roof on the fifth floor, directly across from the Superdome. At that time, evacuations were still underway, and it was an eerie sight. Adding to that, in order to get to the roof, we had to go out a doorway which led to the pool area. Directly above us was the wall of the Hyatt that became infamous on every TV broadcast of the early days of Katrina – the entire North side of the hotel was destroyed. Nearly all of the windows blown out. It was awesome to behold. Curtains were hanging out the windows, pieces of furniture strewn everywhere, shards of glass embedded in the roof and the fence around the pool. Amazing.\r\n\r\nAfter we identified a site for our deployment, we decided to get some sleep. It was very hot that night, and there was limited power in the hotel. No air conditioning. It was like a sauna in that place. Dave, Juan and I went on a scouting mission to find a place to bed down. We decided that we wanted a high floor, because earlier that day, a gang of people from the Superdome had attempted to take over the hotel. We wanted some space to react, if necessary. Further, there had been a number of guests and refugees in the hotel, and it was clear that the lower levels had been significantly “over-used” before we got there. So, we found a suite on the 20th floor with the door open. It had a great view, overlooking The Dome. It also had no windows, as it was on the devastated side of the hotel.. But, it did have a nice cross breeze, so we took it.\r\n\r\nThe inside of the room looked like the aftermath of a rock group trash-the-place party. Furniture was over turned, lamps on the floor, glass everywhere from the windows. Juan cleared the glass off of a table, and spread his sleeping bag there. We pulled down the Murphy bed, Dave taking box springs and I the mattress. I cracked open the bottle of Macallan 18 I’d brought, and we toasted our new adventure. Then we absolutely crashed for the next few hours.\r\n\r\nWhen we got up, around 6:30 AM, we got our first real view of New Orleans. From our 20th floor corner window, we looked directly out at the Superdome. The plaza there was still filled with people and trash. There was water everywhere we looked. Lots of water. Every building had windows blown out, structural damage or both. The air was virtually filled with helicopters. The images and the reality of it all was overwhelming.\r\n\r\nThe three of us discussed our plans for the morning, had our nutritious and tasty Power bar breakfast, collected our gear and got to work. At the direction of Sgt. Terry Peters of the New Orleans Police, I was still wearing the Glock, and in fact would be for the next five days.\r\n\r\nAt that time, the Hyatt still had limited emergency power, so we took the elevator down to the fourth floor to meet with Greg Meffert and his team. We told them our plans for deploying the communications gear, and spent some time listening to their stories of the past couple of days. These folks had been through hell. We learned that Mayor Nagin, Greg, Scott Domke, “Big Jimmy” Goodson, Police Chief Eddie Compass and others had brought their families to the Hyatt to ride out the storm. They all felt that it was not only a safe location, but it is situated directly across Poydras Street from City Hall. They all planned, once the storm subsided, to quickly move into City Hall and resume the business of running the city. But then the worst happened – the 17th Street Levee and the Industrial Canal Levee both breached. As the water quickly rose around them – at a rate of over a foot every ten minutes – they all sent their families to the airport in a National Guard Humvee, and began planning their next moves.\r\n\r\nAccording to Greg, things began to deteriorate quickly. He described the events quite well in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:\r\n\r\nOn Tuesday, the levee at the 17th Street Canal broke, and water poured into the city, raising the water level by a foot or more every 20 minutes, Mr. Meffert estimates. Within hours, nearby streets were submerged in more than 12 feet of water. Water quickly engulfed the Hyatt and surrounding government buildings. Mr. Meffert and his team spent most of this day helping with rescue efforts, mostly from boats. \"We were just pulling (people) from the water,\" he says. \r\nMr. Meffert evacuated his wife and two young boys to his parents\' home in San Antonio. The evacuation party included the pregnant wife of the chief of police. \r\nThat evening Mr. Meffert realized things would get worse unless communications were restored, immediately. \r\nThat\'s when Mr. Domke had his brainstorm. For the next five days, virtually all communications out of New Orleans by the city\'s top officials depended on Mr. Domke\'s laptop and this single Internet phone account. \r\nMr. Meffert, a software entrepreneur before he joined the mayor\'s office in 2002, realized he needed more lines and more phones to cope with a rapidly deteriorating situation. Before dawn on Wednesday, Messrs. Meffert and Domke and some other aides drove a military Humvee into the darkness and devastation. They were accompanied by the chief of police, Eddie Compass. \r\nTheir destination was Office Depot, where they loaded up on phones, routers, printers and fax machines -- anything that was needed to support a government under siege by weather and crime. The store had already been looted of some supplies. While Mr. Meffert was looking for printer cartridges, several looters returned. Mr. Compass, the police chief, roared at the looters and chased them off, says Mr. Meffert. \r\nMr. Meffert told the chief he needed a large computer server for email. They found the one used by Office Depot in its backroom. \r\n\"Do you really need this?\" Mr. Meffert says the police chief asked him. \r\n\"Yes, we do,\" Mr. Meffert says he replied. \r\nThe server was screwed into an equipment rack in the backroom. Without the use of tools, the chief bent parts of the metal rack and ripped the server out of its housing with his hands, Mr. Meffert says, adding: \"I have never seen that before.\" \r\nThe team was sleeping and working out of a single conference room, called Burgundy D. There were enough cots for five people. Another half-dozen slept on the floor. In one corner, phones, routers, cables and other gear lay in a pile. Dirty blankets and clothes were scattered about. \r\nOn Wednesday evening, when Mr. Meffert was manning the phones, one rang. On the other end was President Bush in Air Force One. Mr. Meffert, now wearing the hat of secretary, scribbled down the number and sent someone to find Mayor Ray Nagin. \r\nThe mayor later recounted his conversation with the president in an interview with WWL-AM on Thursday. \"I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice,\" the mayor said. \r\nLater in the interview, conducted over the single Hyatt link, the mayor blasted the response to date. \"I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man,\" he said. \r\nOn Thursday morning, Mr. Meffert\'s team got word that 200 gang members were moving on the Hyatt, apparently aware that it still had food, drink and power. To signify that they were in the gang, members had made a distinguishing rip in their shirts, says Mr. Meffert. An elevated walkway from the Superdome connects to a shopping arcade, which in turn connects to the Hyatt. \r\nAround 10 o\'clock that morning, the team evacuated its fourth-floor command post for the 27th floor. The only equipment it brought along was a handful of cordless phones, which had a range of 300 feet. On the 27th floor, where the mayor was staying, the phones worked only if the user hung over the balcony toward the atrium inside the building. \r\n\"This was when the last parts of the government were about to come undone,\" says Mr. Meffert. \"It felt like the Alamo -- we were surrounded and had only short bursts of communication.\" \r\nWith Police Chief Compass and other officers blocking the entrance, looters were not able to enter the Hyatt, Mr. Meffert says. \r\nAt the same time, water continued to rise around the building. Mr. Domke and Jimmy Goodson, an aide in charge of security for the team, realized that the electronics for the hotel -- upon which the single communication link depended -- were on the ground floor, perilously close to the rising water. They dispatched members of their group to throw sandbags around the electronics room. The water reached within three inches of the room but never damaged the electronics, Mr. Meffert says. \r\nNew Orleans had an emergency communications plan, but it had serious flaws. The back-up communications of the city\'s Office of Emergency Preparedness consisted of a few older model satellite phones, but their batteries went dead and couldn\'t be recharged, Mr. Meffert says. \r\nIn the early stages of the storm, the city\'s emergency command office, on the ninth floor of city hall, got power from an emergency diesel generator. But by the time the hurricane passed, it had burned up about one third of its fuel. Fuel soon ran out completely and couldn\'t be replenished. \r\nMeantime, the commercial phone systems that the city relied on blinked out during the storm and its immediate aftermath, according to Mr. Meffert. Land lines went dead in part because of switch and power failures, and city-issued cellphones stopped working after towers were blown down, he says. BellSouth Corp. says that its nearby telecom hub was operative throughout the crisis. \r\nMr. Meffert says the satellite phones were used in the early stages, but their batteries soon were drained. He tried to recharge one phone, but it wouldn\'t keep the charge, he says. \"It kept flashing \'low bat,\' \" he recalls. \r\nMr. Meffert says that the city was unable to spend more on emergency communications because of a budget crisis and cuts in federal aid. But he doubts that additional money would have helped much. \"Virtually no city could have ever prepared for something of this magnitude,\" he says. \r\nWhen Mr. Meffert arrived at the mayor\'s office in 2002, budgets were calculated on cheap calculators, he says. Out of 70 major cities in the U.S., the New Orleans municipal Web site was ranked dead last that year in a quality survey. \r\nThis past year, Mr. Meffert\'s team constructed an innovative surveillance bubble over the city consisting of cameras, wireless Internet and software in an attempt to lower the city\'s record murder rate. Though controversial with civil-rights groups, the system has nearly halved crime in the 20 percent of the city where it operates, says Mr. Meffert. He distributed BlackBerrys among senior ranks in the government, devices that proved invaluable in this crisis once email resumed working late last week. \r\nIn the middle of the chaos several days ago, Mr. Meffert was notified that the city\'s Web site now ranks No. 1 of those 70 major U.S. cities. The site stayed up throughout the storm because Mr. Domke was able to shift it to a Dallas server. \r\nToward the end of last week, the \"cavalry\" began arriving, says Mr. Meffert, in the form of several thousand walkie-talkie phones provided by Sprint Nextel Corp. The phones operate directly between users within short distances, so they do not require cell towers to transmit. \r\nAt the same time, a team from computer supplier Unisys Corp. arrived, led by an ex-Army Ranger named Ed Minyard. In addition to providing equipment to begin constructing a wireless network in the Hyatt and City Hall, Mr. Minyard brought some other supplies: bottles of Wild Turkey whiskey. \r\n\"We had the necessary provisions,\" says Mr. Minyard. \"These boys needed it.\" \r\nAfter spending about an hour with Greg and his team, we got back to business. As we left the “Command Center” / Conference Room / Dormitory Greg and Team had established themselves in, the hotel’s generator died. We first thought this was temporary situation, and simply used the fire escape stairs to get down to the second floor, which held the main passageway through the Hyatt to the Loyola Street exit. The usually-pristine marble floors were strewn with every imaginable piece of trash and garbage – articles of clothing, empty water bottle, used MRE packages, and worse, human waste. You literally had to clear a path in places in order to get through it all. \r\n\r\nOnce outside, we had to wade to our trucks. First through a sea of garbage, then through a foot of brown, murky water. We had parked on the median (“neutral ground” in New Orleans parlance) on Loyola Street, but now had to get our gear back across the flood into the hotel. We decided to drive our trucks through the water to the hotel entrance to unload. That meant convincing a Platoon of National Guardsmen to clear us a path through all their gear, but they were more than accommodating to us. We drove through the high water, and unloaded our gear on to a couple of hotel baggage carts.\r\n\r\nOnce back inside the hotel, we learned that the power was still down. That posed a real challenge to us, in that we had a lot of gear to get to the 5th floor roof. We decided to wait a few minutes to see whether the hotel staff could get the power back on. That’s when we noticed the guy in the elevator.\r\n\r\nThe Hyatt at the Superdome is an atrium hotel. It is open from the second floor to the twenty-seventh floor, with huge windows on the East and West sides. The elevators are glass-enclosed capsules, allowing for a great view. When the power went out, Mr. Ron Foreman, Director of the New Orleans Zoo, and husband of Sally Foreman, Mayor Nagin’s Public Information Officer, was on his way up in the East elevators. It was early morning, and the sun was streaming through the large windows, directly on the elevator capsule with Mr. Foreman inside. The hotel engineers were working to restore power as quickly as possible, but even 15 minutes under those conditions would have been horrible. It ultimately took over five hours to get him out. By the time he was freed, he was near collapse, and quite dehydrated.\r\n\r\nWhile the elevator mini-drama was going on, Juan, Dave and I went about our mission. We had decided after 20 minutes that we couldn’t wait any longer, so began carrying all of our gear to the roof. Because of the design of the Hyatt, that turned out to be quite a workout. We had to carry approximately 500 pounds of gear up two flights of stairs from Ground level to the second floor. Then, because there was no other direct path, we had to go back down on the west end of the hotel to the 1st floor, then back up a non-working escalator from the 1st to the 3rd floor. Once on the third floor, we could then access the fire escape to get to the 5th floor, where we could access the roof. Once on the roof, we then had to carry the gear another 75 yards to the spot we needed to deploy the satellite dish. During all this, the temperature outside, and inside, was extreme – over 100 degrees. The humidity was oppressive. By the time we were finished, we were all soaked in sweat.\r\n\r\nOnce we had the satellite gear on the roof, we then had to consider the generator. We had hoped that the power to the hotel would be restored, but no such luck. We were faced with the daunting task of carrying a very heavy generator and four five-gallon cans of gas through the multi-level maze of the Hyatt. As we stood on the roof, we saw that there was a parking garage connected to the Hyatt on the south side. Unfortunately, it was surrounded by as much as three to four feet of water, with flooded vehicles abandoned in the roadways, including two Police cars and an SUV. We decided that a scouting mission was in order. Juan, Dave and I went back out to our two SUV’s and drove to the flooded corner of Loyola and Girod Streets. We could see the garage entrance about half a block away. We watched a military HumVee slowly drive up Girod Street through the water. The wheels were covered. Juan decided that we might be able to make it to the garage if we stayed on the sidewalk, where the water was only up to our running boards. We went for it, and slowly made it to the garage. We situated our generator on the fifth level, where we could toss the power lines over to the roof of the Hyatt. We were darned proud of that bit of ingenuity!\r\n\r\nSo now we had power to the satellite gear, but we still had the problem of where to safely deploy the electronics. All of the gear is designed to be exposed to the elements, but the heat was terrible, and none of us like the idea of hanging out on the roof all day. Besides, we need to get the interior of the hotel “hot” with Wi-Fi, so we had to have an entry point. \r\n\r\nRight above our deployment location was Room 605. It should be noted that the Hyatt had lost a couple of hundred windows in the storm. Unfortunately, Room 605 wasn’t one of them. I contacted the Building Engineer, Eddie Haggarty, and asked him if would help us to “reverse-engineer” the window. Eddie came to Room 605, and proceeded to hit the window with all his might, using the heavy porcelain cover to the toilet tank. He hit the window no fewer than 6 times, with absolutely no effect. Considering how many windows had simple disintegrated during Katrina, we gained a deep appreciation for the power that must have been involved in the winds. After considering (and just as quickly dismissing) the idea of using the every present Glock to solve the problem, Eddie gave it one more shot –with a chair. This time the window broke into thousands of tiny pieces. We had access!\r\n\r\nBy now, it was getting on to noon in New Orleans. Interestingly, we later learned that Digital Earth had taken a satellite photo of the Central Business District, including the Hyatt, at around 10AM. In it, you can see our vehicles! We thought that was Very Cool! Within minutes of the photo being taken, we were on the rooftop, doing our thing.\r\n\r\nOnce we established the beachhead within Room 605, we began to deploy our Digital Breadcrumbs to WiFi-enable the hotel. These are cool devices, developed by Jim Washington at Rajant Technologies. These “lunch-box” sized devices are battery or AC powered repeaters, allowing us to extend our WiFi bubble up to a half a mile from the satellite dish. Using 4 Breadcrumbs, we established a network covering the entire During the time that we were deploying our gear, the hotel engineers were working to get the generator back on line, but to no avail. As the day wore into night, it was clear that we had the only power in the entire hotel. Before evening fell, we decided to do a bit of “scrounging” in the hotel. We knew, for example, that there was fan in the room that we’d slept in the night before. We also managed to find our way to the Regency Club, on the destroyed north side of the 27th floor. There, we “liberated” a couple of boxes of Starbucks coffee, a coffee maker, and several cups and glasses. There had been other scroungers there before us, but since there was no power, no one else took the things we decided to relocate to room 605. We figured that as long as we had to be subjected to the conditions which existed in the Hyatt at that time, we might as well be as comfortable as possible.\r\n\r\nAs night began to fall, we made our way down to the 4th floor where Greg Meffert and his team were sequestered. We told them we had power, fans, etc. up in our quarters, along with several bottle so booze that I had brought in (including the infamous “Wild Turkey” mentioned in the Wall Street Journal). It wasn’t long before all of the Mayor’s team was in our hallway, enjoying the breeze from the fan, and what was no doubt the first bit of relaxation they’d experienced in days. Before long, we were joined by Mayor Nagin, his bodyguards, and Sally Foreman, his Press Secretary. \r\n\r\nThen, a very interesting phenomenon began to occur. Also in the hotel were members of the international press corps. Reporters and photographers from agencies ranging from the LA Times to the London Times began to drift in to our area. They were being drawn to us by the light! It was so basic, so instinctual that we couldn’t help but be amazed by it. But we welcomed them in,\r\n\r\nNow, at the arrival of the press, Ms. Foreman got a bit defensive. She made it very clear that anything said or heard in this venue was strictly “off-the-record”! In fact, she asked that we move the press out of the hallway and into our room as long as the Mayor was there in the hallway with us. In order to make things as friendly and comfortable as possible, we opened the security on our internet link, allowing the press to post their stories for the first time in a couple of days. That, coupled with the booze, created a bond between us that lasts still today.