I had a bit of an odd viewpoint into hurricane relief --my dad put in time helping people in storm relief my whole life growing up--not in any official capacity, just as a neighbor and volunteer. Some of his stories flavored the book. During Katrina, my husband's business sold generators throughout the storm affected areas as a distributor, so that viewpoint wound up in the book. It was more a creative reworking of all of those than any particular one.