Survivors Wait as Disaster Builds

It's not as though no one expected the disaster. For years, federal and other studies had zeroed in on New Orleans as one of the nation's most vulnerable areas to a natural disaster -- a major city lying below sea level, sandwiched between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, in the heart of hurricane country. As recently as November, one expert laid out a disaster scenario that read like a script for Katrina.

"Should the response have been much better organized? Absolutely," said Richard Stuart Olson, who has been researching disasters for 30 years and is chairman of the political science department at Florida International University in Miami. "None of this can be a surprise."

He said growing public frustration in the New Orleans area reminded him of the anger at FEMA's halting response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but he said, "This is a much larger version of 'Where the hell's the cavalry?' "

President Bush and other federal officials insisted the government was responding quickly, first to rescue stranded residents, then to help recovery efforts and stop the flooding of New Orleans as high waters keep spilling from Lake Pontchartrain.

At times, the president and his chief spokesman struck a defensive tone in the face of criticism that the relief efforts had been too slow and that federal funds had been cut back for New Orleans flood control in recent years. Bush and White House spokesman Scott McClellan said it was not the time to engage in "politics" or "finger-pointing."

McClellan said 50 medical disaster teams were in the region, along with about 30 search-and-rescue units. He said the Department of Transportation had dispatched a thousand trucks carrying 7 million meals and millions of gallons of water. About 15,000 tarps were brought to the Gulf Coast to provide temporary shelters, plus 10,000 rolls of plastic sheeting and 3.4 million pounds of ice, he said.

Secretary Chertoff said that rescue operations were continuing "in full force" but that relief workers were challenged by the dual nature of the disaster: Hurricane Katrina's devastating landfall, followed a day later by the flooding of Louisiana's largest city.

"We are continuing to search 24/7," Chertoff said to criticism that relief efforts had lagged. "We search at day. We search at night."

In Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge, the head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown said power outages, rising waters and violence by looters and others shooting at rescuers had complicated relief efforts. But he denied that the government was slow in responding.