We replay a bit of a conversation from two years ago Monday, between Alex Chadwick and John Burnett. Burnett rode out Hurricane Katrina in a New Orleans high-rise hotel, and described the storm's impact as it hit the city.
ALEX COHEN, host: In thinking back to that day two years ago when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, we remembered a conversation with NPR reporter John Burnett.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: John had ridden out the storm in a downtown New Orleans hotel, and he managed to find a working phone line and call us.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Here's a part of that exchange from August 29th, 2005.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: John Burnett, how is New Orleans looking?</s>JOHN BURNETT: Well, Alex, it is worse for the wear. From where I'm standing on the 21st floor of a high-rise hotel overlooking the Mississippi River, the worst of the hurricane has moved off to the northeast, crossing up into Mississippi. I can see streetcar tracks down below me that are under water. I don't see quite as much debris flying through the air. There was roofing, and there was foam and plastic that was flying up 30 stories high. I can see an apartment building below me where a lot of the roofing and the siding has been stripped away. There are plate glass windows that have been busted out. So this has left this graceful old city quite bruised.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: But the storm itself moved slightly to the east, so it spared the city the worst of its assault.</s>JOHN BURNETT: Yeah. And - but, you know, it's - and that sounds fine when, you know, you sort of hear that from around the country, but about 8:00 a.m., when  we were getting the full force of it, this is about 27-story hotel. It's very stout, built in 1973. Good, sturdy hotel. It was creaking like an old ship rocking in the seas. We had the bathtub, still do, full of water because all services are out, all utilities are dead. And the water in the tub was rocking back and forth. We watched the curtains. It was like an earthquake almost, this thing was moving so much because of these hurricane winds. But that's over now. And with every, you know, half-hour that passes outside things gets just a little bit better.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: But of course things were not really getting better. They were getting worse, much worse.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: That was NPR's John Burnett describing the scene in New Orleans as it looked two years ago today.