Residents of the poverty-stricken Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans cry for help after floods submerged 80 percent of the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The boat was useless to these people because it had lost its motor. Some residents waited as long as five days to be rescued. A historian of the disaster wrote, “Americans were not used to seeing their country in ruins, their people in want.” Wide World Photos, Inc.