Mourning a Federal Katrina Victim

The Homeland Security Department says more than 14,000 federal employees have been deployed to the Gulf Coast region in connection with Hurricane Katrina response efforts. But one of the employees who was working in the region before the storm struck refused to leave, and became one of the nearly 1,300 victims of the disaster.

Helen White, 54, who worked for the Small Business Administration in its New Orleans District Office as a disaster loan specialist, drowned in the attic of her home in the Ninth Ward after she and her sister decided to try to ride out the storm, Federal News Radio reports today.