Early Sunday, Thurmon Herring Jr. gave a friendly greeting to a neighbor and raved about the new hose he was using to wash his car. Nothing seemed amiss.

THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN By James Lee Burke Simon & Schuster. 373 pp. $26

The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional...

Stanley Carpenter has waited 3 1/2 years to see his home -- the one Hurricane Isabel drove a 40-foot wooden pole through -- rebuilt stronger, higher and out of the reach of floodwaters.

MARKS, Miss., July 16 -- From the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Mississippi Delta to this town where Martin Luther King Jr. began his Poor People's Campaign almost four decades ago, John Edwards's message has been the same: Americans living in poverty are working hard but need more help ...

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) ended a week of seclusion yesterday to say he'll return to work in Washington, ending speculation that the Republican would resign after his telephone number appeared last week in the records of an alleged Washington prostitution ring.

Discover warm places to go in late September/early October that will be away from the sweep of hurricanes.

NEW ORLEANS "Step Two" was interesting. It was one of 33 steps in an article, "How to Destroy an African-American City in Thirty Three Steps -- Lessons From Katrina," written this month by Louisiana Weekly contributing columnist Bill Quigley.

NEW ORLEANS -- It was an ill-advised journey to a moribund city, the place of my birth and upbringing. Family and friends, all living elsewhere, begged me not to come here. My wife, Mary Anne, feared that I would become depressed.

Bill Proenza was on the job as director of the National Hurricane Center for less than a week when he delivered his first warning about the looming loss of a crucial forecasting tool: a rare satellite that measures winds during storms.

The levee system that was designed to protect New Orleans, but failed catastrophically during Hurricane Katrina, was completed under severe financial and political pressure, including opposition from local officials and environmentalists, according to a federally sponsored report set to be releas...

MIAMI, July 9 -- The embattled director of the National Hurricane Center was replaced here today after a brief but turbulent tenure in which he publicly criticized his bosses and then lost the support of much of his staff.