Summary

In “What Difference Would It Make,” readers learn that Clara Rita Bartholomew, 61 years old, was scared. Her daughter was not able to pick her up to evacuate to Atlanta, so she went to shelter in the bathroom and then in the attic. The water was rising, and she was screaming. She saw a white couple drown in front of her, and she watched a body float right by her with an alligator close behind. More than 1600 people died in Hurricane Katrina, not all of them because of the flood. Hunger, thirst, exposure, and lack of medicine killed many more.

Cory Delaney, 24 years old, went with his father, disabled mother, and a few others to shelter in his aunt’s two-story house in New Orleans. They ran out of drinking water and supplies, so they hoped to be...