Photo SpecialThen and Now: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

HORRIFIC SCENE

After plowing his 18-wheeler through rising floodwater, Chester Lastie, 44, found himself stuck on the Claiborne Bridge in the Lower Ninth Ward with his family amid a landscape of tragedy. The diesel mechanic pulled to safety a woman and her daughter who had become wedged between the bridge and an uprooted house floating in raging waters just as the house splintered into pieces. "I was lucky to hear them," he says. "There was screaming everywhere."