Salesmen, emergency managers, and government officials met at the Morial Convention Center, where some of the most harrowing images from Hurricane Katrina were recorded, to mingle around $45,000 field toilets and other tools of the disaster-response trade. Everyone from big-box store and hospital-chain managers to National Guardsmen, Coast Guard officers, and staff from the Red Cross were there to peruse the offerings in anticipation for the next natural disaster. Here's a look inside the big business of preparing for mass destruction, where the average loss over the past decade has been an estimated $187 billion yearly.
