Big Dog, Brad- consider this

From the Kansas City Star-

Inside the third-floor New Orleans apartment, Khaliee looks around and knows he and his family can survive.
They are up high, so if Hurricane Katrina does flood the streets, they’ll be safe. The freezer has enough meat, including chicken and sausage, to keep them fed. With charcoal and lighter fluid, fruit juice and bottled water, they have what they need.
He focuses on the air conditioner next.
“I turned it to 50 degrees,” Khaliee says. “I knew once the storm hit, the lights would go out and that would be it — no more air conditioner. I had to get it cool in there.”
Khaliee didn’t want to be here, making these rash decisions and riding out Katrina. He had wanted to heed the last-minute warnings and get out while they still could.
But he couldn’t. His bosses at Galatoire’s, a Bourbon Street restaurant, weren’t about to close the doors because of some storm expected late the next day.
“I was stuck,” says Khaliee, 28. “Should I leave and get fired, or stay and have a job the next day?”
He had worked at this restaurant for several years, graduating from dishwasher to cook. Denise Smart had the couple’s first child a year ago and now is about six weeks away from delivering their second boy.
So Khaliee stayed, working a double shift. He gets off around midnight and sees the gray clouds forming, feels the wind pushing harder. Now it is too late to leave.
There are no buses leaving the city, no transportation available. The fuel tank of his Buick Riviera is empty.
His mother’s apartment on New Orleans’ west bank will be their refuge. By Sunday night they are inside ready and waiting: Khaliee, Denise, 1-year-old Tyrese and Khaliee’s brother, Usamah. His mom had to stay at work at a nursing home near the apartment.