America’s most dangerous enemy isn’t extremist Islam, but outraged nature

A FRIEND and former colleague slept last night in his attic. With a gun supplied by the cops when they deputised him after the hurricane.

He takes it home each night, along with a bottle of water also supplied by the Sheriff's office. Each day's heat, stored by the roof tiles, meeting the rising stink from the rotted vermin in the water below, creates a stench that for the first couple of nights made him vomit into the slime flooding what used to be his bedroom.

Today, when dawn breaks, he will climb out through a hole in the roof and wait for the police boat to take him wherever he can be of most use. He could be required to shoot a looter, but what's on his mind is finding a shovel, so that when he comes home tonight, he can start removing the mud left in his home by the retreating waters. His wife and twin sons are in Boston, where they flew two days before Katrina. As a family, they have nothing left. No furniture, no clothes, no jobs. Nothing other than the still-standing structure of their house.