One of the early signs it was getting to me was the deterioration of my handwriting-never great to begin with. Left; September 11, sanitizing the kitchen. Right; September 20, responding to a church fire.

The Katrina experience has taken some time to process, both emotionally and as an opportunity to improve my preparedness for future events. As I consider the aftermath and lessons learned, I'll post additional articles here.

The first articles on the list were emails I sent back to family and colleagues while I was in the field with some commentary added later. The rest have been written since I've returned, and rely upon the journal I kept while deployed and my not always sterling memory. All these stories have been written with an eye toward protecting the privacy of any involved parties. In some few cases I've had to avoid stories which, by their nature, would serve to identify specific people.