There was plenty of advance warning for the dangers of Katrina. Yet, people living on beach front property in Mississippi were instantly killed when the first waves came ashore, and whole communities were wiped away. Why didn't the authorities warn the public adequately in order to prevent the loss of life?
The New Orleans city leaders ordered evacuations while knowing that 100K of its citizens were unable to do that themselves. The authorities had, in a sense, covered themselves by publicly stating at an earlier date that the city could not be responsible for an evacuation. Why didn't they scramble to find ways to evacuate them when a direct hit became imminent?
Going backwards a year in time, the Pam hurricane simulation study predicted quite accurately the disaster scenario triggered by Katrina. Therefore, why didn't the city and the Louisiana state authorities take preventative steps, and why didn't they develop contingency plans?
Looking back at the preceding thirty years in New Orleans, we see a rapidly deteriorating society with high crime rates, and one with 140K people (28%) at the poverty level, many who did not have any means to evacuate. We should therefore ask the painful question, why did the New Orleans leadership allow this gradual descent into effectively a 3rd world status? {See for example Sonja Steptoe's "The City Tourists Never Knew" in TIME, vol 166 no 11, 2005 Sept 12.)
Looking back over the whole previous century we see a never ending sequence of hurricanes that cause a massive loss of life and property each time they hit the gulf coast. A psychiatrist can remind a client "if you keep doing what you have been doing, you will get the same results that you got before". The same applies to the whole coastal region from Texas to Florida. Hence the obvious question: why have these states, counties and cities in those regions not changed their ways?
So let me now switch to the good news.
1) The ultimate driving force of all these disasters - reckless, irresponsible, excessive procreation in the last century - is off the table. No policy maker in his/her right mind can even hint to it.
2) While one would think that the local communities would be responsible for dealing with disasters, there is a well developed tradition that they can pass on the bill to the nation and there is always a gung ho politician around that promisses loudly "We WILL rebuild!" because this daredevil proclamation will not affect his/her paycheck.
3) There is the wonderful delusion that a disaster is actually a fantastic opportunity: a shot in the arm of the economy! (As if we should be delighted when a person embroiled in an expensive divorce, getting a heart attack hears that his clumsy teenager burned down the house because lawyers, the healthcare system and contractors get new business. Their work would at best restore at great expense - payed by someone - a previous situation.)
4) The FEMA agency bungled its responses. Even better was the availability of a scapegoat: its leadership. This has become a superior means to deflect all attention away from 100 years of mismanagement at all levels of the bureacracies and of the politicians in the Gulf region.
5) Best of all: the mass media bought into this simplification of the events for its readership.