In Disaster's Aftermath, the Buck Stops at the President's Desk

The devastation is so widespread it's likely that any response from the government, no matter how well planned and executed, would not have met all the need. But no one could watch the last week's dizzying events in New Orleans and feel confident that the nation has sufficiently improved its capacity since 9/11 to handle a major disaster -- either natural or man-made.

"This is a fundamental failure of preparedness and public administration, and it suggests the strategy we have been following [on domestic security] has fundamental holes in it," said University of Pennsylvania political scientist Donald F. Kettl, a leading expert on government operations and author of the recent book "System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics."

The really scary thing is that few potential threats have been anticipated or studied as extensively as a devastating New Orleans flood. Last week, Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." But a chorus of experts warned for years that storm surges after a hurricane could overflow the levees, and produce the same result as the actual breach that occurred: disastrous flooding in the city.

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency identified a major New Orleans flood as one of the three most likely catastrophic disasters threatening the nation. The New Orleans Times-Picayune detailed the risks in a comprehensive investigative series in 2002. Last summer, Louisiana State University Hurricane Center participated in the "Hurricane Pam Exercise" -- a Category 3 simulation -- and concluded that more than a million residents would be forced to evacuate, and that as many as 300,000 others would be trapped in the city.

Beyond these prior warnings, Katrina, of course, was tracked for days before it hit the Gulf Coast. If the local, state and federal governments were unprepared to fully cope with a disaster that had been so widely discussed and examined, and which announced its arrival so far in advance, it seems not only prudent but urgent to ask how ready we are to cope with another major terrorist strike. Presumably Al Qaeda won't provide as much advance warning as Katrina.

Yet, despite heroic efforts by thousands of individuals, such as police officers and Coast Guard divers, the government reaction to the flood has seemed as riddled with holes as the New Orleans levees themselves. "I don't have any answer as to why we were not much more ready than where we are today," says Hassan S. Mashriqui, an assistant professor at the LSU Hurricane Center.