WASHINGTON (CNN) — The response of government at all levels to Hurricane Katrina was “dismal,” poorly planned and badly coordinated, showing that more than four years after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, “America is still not ready for prime time,” a House report concludes.
“It remains difficult to understand how government could respond so ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for years, and for which specific dire warnings had been issued for days. This crisis was not only predictable, it was predicted,” the committee said in the report. “If 9/11 was a failure of imagination, then Katrina was a failure of initiative. It was a failure of leadership.”
BY TOM TOMORROW