I think an important thing to add to the timeline is the transcript of Nagin's evacuation order. He clearly states that people who evacuate to the refuge of last resort bring 5 days of food, water and medicine.
FEMA then brought 360,000 MREs and I don't know how many cases of water into the Superdome. (I can't find any report that states the amount of water brought in, but I'm sure it was comparable if not more than the MREs)
So we are talking about some personal responsibility here. Yes, most of these people were poor, but if even third of them brought food and water with them. Then how can the media keep saying they went 3 to 4 days without food and water? I'd sure like to know when they started distributing out the MREs. Those should have been saved until at least the second day. I have this feeling that some yoyo started passing them out the first night and everyone just feasted until they were gone the next day.
Well, that could simply be that the media is following its typical pattern of not counting anything that is not done by the government, like health-care and lunches.