The “News-Hurricane” category of this blog began with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The second post in that blog was this one in the early afternoon of Saturday, August 27, 2005, which was one of the first in the blogosphere warning of Katrina’s potential danger to the New Orleans area and urging citizens to evacuate immediately. Unfortunately, most of the folks who stayed and lost their lives in Katrina probably had no way to read the recommendation passed along in the final sentence of that post.
Over the past two years, the “News-Hurricanes” category has developed into a cross-section of articles and blog posts on the various legal, economic and political issues involved in the rebuilding of New Orleans. On the two year anniversary of the storm, here are several more good ones:

Reason Magazine’s Daniel Rothschild has traveled to New Orleans twenty times over the past two years reporting on the reconstruction. Here is the first installment of a three part series that is a must-read for anyone interested in the reconstruction of New Orleans;
The NY Times’ Adam Nossiter, who has also reported extensively on New Orleans over the past two years, provides this article entitled “Commemorations for a City 2 Years After Storm;”
Moneyball’s Michael Lewis writes about the risk of Hurricane Katrina;
Nicole Gelinas of City Journal writes on how the breakdown in law and order continues to hamper the rebuilding of New Orleans;
Ben C. Toledano argues that New Orleans effectively died long before the hurricane struck; and
This Associated Press story describes the difficult task of re-establishing New Orleans’ small businesses, which were a major source of job loss after Katrina (a point made at the time). One of the most interesting aspects of the story is one small businessman’s view on immigration:

“Trying to find workers, that’s the toughest thing,” [small businessman Robert] Thompson recalled. “The people we dealt with ó craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, roofers ó weren’t home and if they were, they were decimated themselves.”
Help did come in the first few weeks and months, in the form of workers from Honduras and Mexico who arrived in New Orleans to work in the rebuilding.
“Thank God for them, they were the work force for many, many months,” Thompson said.