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Former New Orleans Mayor Expresses Regret in New Book

In Katrina's Secrets Ray Nagin wishes that he would have handled the disaster differently.

 

(Photo: CreateSpace)

Additional excerpts have leaked from the former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin’s new book that hits stores Wednesday. In Katrina's Secrets; Storms After the Storm, Vol. 1 he says that Hurricane Katrina left the city, “on a quarantined island of sorts” where all those present were surrounded by evil and ill intentions.

 

The book covers the first 30 days after the storm that hit NOLA on August 29, 2005. During those days Nagin admits that he could have done more as the man in power.

 

Had he called a mandatory evacuation eight to ten hours before the storm hit, perhaps not as many people would have died; had he called for more mental health services, maybe there would have not been a 50 percent jump in suicides; had he reached out for surrounding communities to open their doors, possibly the riots would not have been intense.

 

"Our neighbors were not very neighborly when it really counted. They along with others helped make an intolerable Katrina experience akin to being in hell without ice water," he writes.

 

Though the storm hit hard, Nagin says, “"In a lot of respects, the city has a lot of good things going." He credits Katrina as the reason educated young entrepreneurs are moving to the city and the public school system is being rebuilt, among other improvements.

 

The book is self-published on CreateSpace, a division of Amazon.com, because of Nagin’s fear that publishers would change his “voice” through the editing process.

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