Rescue Me...

The story of a storm -- and a disastrously slow rescue:

At the adjoining and equally squalid New Orleans Arena, people began putting plastic bags on their feet to walk through the pools of urine. And yet, in a scene from Hieronymus Bosch, a man named Samuel Thompson, 34, took out his violin and played Bach's famous lamentation, Sonata No. 1 in G minor. He told L.A. Times reporter Scott Gold, who witnessed the scene, "These people have nothing. I have a violin. And I should play for them. They should have something."

Newsweek's narrative.