Brian Williams:

I was on the phone with my wife while at the checkout area when a weather bulletin arrived on my Blackberry, along with a strong caveat from our New York producers. The wording and contents were so incendiary that our folks were concerned that it wasn’t real… either a bogus dispatch or a rogue piece of text. I filed a live report by phone for Nightly News (after an exchange with New York about the contents of the bulletin) and very cautiously couched the information. Later, we learned it was real, every word of it. Below are actual excerpts, in the urgent, all-capital-letters style of the medium. Note the time on the message… but more importantly… note the content.

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL 
HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY 
OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE 
FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER.

AT LEAST HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES 
WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED 
ROOFS WILL FAIL...ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING
APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED...ALL 
WINDOWS WILL BE BLOWN OUT.

THE VAST MAJORITY...OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED 
OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN 
STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST 
POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN 
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER 
SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING 
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

The last sentence in that statement is as concise a summation of conditions in New Orleans as is possible. We talked about the document en route to New Orleans.

Read (MSNBC via [Lost Remote](http://www.lostremote.com/archives/005951.html))