[Benigno Aguirre, of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, has been watching and reading about looters in Louisiana.] It may look from the outside as if they are stealing or breaking the...

We want to act as if we can live apart from each other. To me that’s the tragedy

[The disaster in New Orleans] is not an act of god, … This is an act of man. The federal government refused to spend the money to improve the levees.

This whole thing has gone beyond the likely scenario.

That is the behavior people take under the pressure of survival, … This is misconstrued as looting, as thievery.