NEW ORLEANS — On Friday, Sept. 2, 2005, Alexandra Wheeler stood outside the New Orleans Convention Center with about 30,000 other desperate people, stranded for five days in the all-encompassing destruction of .

Wheeler was clutching her 5-month-old twins. They were dehydrated and weak after a harrowing trek from their Uptown home through pitch-black flood waters, two days atop a highway overpass, and finally, two more days in a sea of humanity that she described as “like being in a third-world country on United States soil.”

Still, Wheeler said she never really feared for her life until the military arrived.

“The officers that were standing by had guns pointed on us,” Wheeler said. “At this point we're terrified because we don't know if we're going to be shot or what's going to happen.

See Full Page