Fema 'knew of New Orleans danger':BBC documentary Wed

[cal04]

The former head of the US emergency agency has acknowledged that the government knew the flood barriers protecting New Orleans were inadequate.
Michael Brown was forced to quit the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) after bitter criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina. In a BBC documentary, he admitted that the levees had not been upgraded to deal with the most powerful hurricanes. The programme, The Hurricane That Shook America, will be shown on Wednesday.

Watch the interview
In the interview, Mr Brown said that Fema had positioned resources at the New Orleans Superdome stadium to help people who were sheltering there. But he said he was amazed when more and more people kept coming in - a result he described as an "fascinating phenomena". The documentary also reveals that a key briefing officer within Fema sent a message directly to Mr Brown early on the day before Katrina hit, warning him of potentially disastrous flooding in New Orleans, which could trap more than 100,000 people.

In the event, Katrina devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi on 29 August, causing massive flooding in New Orleans, killing about 1,200 people and causing misery to those unable to escape to safety. Last month, Mr Brown testified to a congressional panel investigating shortcomings in the rescue effort, defending his role and saying that Louisiana officials had been reluctant to order evacuations.
He said his "biggest mistake" had been not recognising that Louisiana was "dysfunctional".

Storm predictions

A year before Katrina, emergency teams from the area sat down with hurricane experts and other officials - including senior members of Fema, to run a disaster simulation called Hurricane Pam - which had selected New Orleans as the target.
Ivor van Heerden, an expert on hurricanes from Louisiana State University, told the BBC that local officials had taken the predictions of the Pam exercise rather more seriously than their federal counterparts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4331330.stm

[mr blur]

1. Well, perhaps one of his biggest mistakes

had not been recognising that George Bush was "dysfunctional".