Disasters

President Bush says the first priority in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is to save lives. Saying the recovery from the storm will take years, Bush announced a cabinet-level task force to coordinate a massive response by the federal government.
Katrina took more lives than any other recent U.S. hurricane. Is the destruction a result of poor disaster preparedness? Are people pushing the limits of coastal habitation? Can we ever truly brace for natural disasters?
Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living Tuesday in a race against time and rising waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and Louisiana's governor ordered storm refugees out of a drowning city.
Hurricane Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast at daybreak Monday with shrieking, 145-mph winds and blinding rain, submerging entire neighborhoods up to the rooflines in New Orleans, hurling boats onto land and sending water pouring into Mississippi's strip of beachfront casinos.
Additional fire crews arrived Monday at a blaze burning in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The fire burned more than 400 acres over the weekend near the Gunflint Trail. Despite the fire, it's been business as usual for most outfitters and visitors to Minnesota's canoe country.
It's been 60 years since the world's first use of the atomic bomb. A controversial historical theory re-examines President Truman's true motive for dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.