The Washington Post has a tick-tock article about what went on from the time that the storm started heading towards the Gulf Coast through Friday of last week. It's a useful look at what was going on behind the scenes.

The more I read about Katrina, the clearer it seems to me that in the phase leading up to the storm moving on land, there were many foul-ups at the state and local level, particularly as concerns organizing the evacuation and making plans for those who couldn't drive out under their own power. The plans for the Superdome as the refuge of last resort seemed to have had no consideration given as to what would happen if the power went out.

In addition, there were major problems just with the logistics of trying to deal with a catastrophe of the size we've never had before with communications out and roads blocked by debris and flooding. We seem to discount sometimes how relatively quickly we got help into the city with all the problems that there were with communications and transportation. We (and especially journalists) tend to expect the U.S. government to be able to accomplish miracles, but there were deep logistical problems that had to be overcome and those were in record time. Jack Kelly writes about this in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002 [sic]. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

However, it is clear that FEMA seemed to be overly bureaucratic in its response so that there are all these anecdotal stories of people who were ready and willing to help but they couldn't get in there and help because of paperwork and regulations. For that, Congress is partly to blame because they pass all these regulations in the first place and load up the bureaucracies with requirements and red tape that bog it down in moments of disaster.

And then there is the story of the firefighters who came to help but who got stuck watching videos and handing our PR fliers in Atlanta.

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

Oh, dear. How stupid was that decision?

What we needed was someone who could take charge, ignore red tape, and just do what needed to be done without worrying about regulations, lines of authority, and hurt feelings. Perhaps this is why the most impressive people in the last two weeks have been those in the military. They have the training and the temperament to take charge in life or death crises.

That is why Michael Brown was such a dismal choice. Reading the Washington Post piece, it stands out that he seemed to take a long time to realize the level of emergency he was facing and to act accordingly. Chertoff also. And consequently, Bush seemed unaware of how severe things were early in the week as the levees broke. Hence his rather tone-deaf response in those early days. Why federal officials were slow to realize the extent of the disaster is mystifying to a lot of us.

So, in the second phase of the disaster, after the hurricane struck and for recovery efforts, all levels of government from local to federal failed the people of New Orleans. We can look at what the federal government did and didn't do, but we can also look at why the Red Cross was kept out of New Orleans and why neighboring towns set up blockades to keep the people of New Orleans from leaving the city and entering the suburbs. We can look at the performance of the New Orleans police and also why it took so long to get the National Guard mobilized and into the area - was it just because the Governor didn't ask or should someone have let her know she had to ask if she was that ignorant of the protocol?

Perhaps, no state would have been prepared for this kind of disaster. The Palm Beach paper has an article about how much better prepared Florida is for hurricanes because they have had to become so. They haven't spent the 13 years since Andrew making elaborate plans that sound very nice on powerpoints and paper but aren't worth anything when disaster hits.

Florida emergency planners criticized and even rebuked their counterparts -- or what passes for emergency planners -- in those states for their handling of Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Jeb Bush, the head of Florida AHCA and the head of Florida wildlife (which is responsible for all search and rescue) all said they made offers of aid to Mississippi and Louisiana the day before Katrina hit but were rebuffed. After the storm, they said they've had to not only help provide people to those states but also have had to develop search and rescue plans for them. "They were completely unprepared -- as bad off as we were before Andrew," one Florida official said.

Read David Brooks today on the New Orleans emergency plan.

I watched some of the Sunday shows and saw Senators Landrieu and Vitter and Mayor Nagin. Call me a right wing partisan, but Landrieu and Nagin were not impressive. When Chris Wallace pressed Landrieu on whether the state and local officials bore some responsibility for not conducting a more thorough evacuation and using those school buses, she blamed it on the Bush administration for not supporting mass transit! Huh? Mass transit would have gotten people from their homes and out of the city? What about those buses, Senator? She refused to answer about that. She doesn't want to point fingers except for blaming Bush and FEMA. Nagin didn't explain why the city hadn't developed a more comprehensive plan for evacuating those who could not drive out. They apparently recognized that it was a problem but did nothing to address it. When asked about the buses, he just said that he didn't have drivers for them. Well, that was his job. They must have known that they needed drivers for the buses and should have made plans. I bet some of those National Guard people could drive buses. They needed a plan detailed enough to assign individuals to drive each bus and what routes they would take and how they would get the homebound onto those buses. And that needed to be done ahead of time, at least in the year that they had since the last time they faced this problem. Bob Williams in the Wall Street Journal reminded us of the advance knowledge they had of the potential problems they would face.

The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.

In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved.

A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again, they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected.

So, I find Charles Krauthammer's apportionment of blame to be quite close to where I come down on this. He reserves the top two spots for the Mayor and Governor and then three and four go to Michael Brown and the President. And finally, Congress and the American people who don't put more pressure on their politicians to be more responsible.

Perhaps David Brooks is right and government failed because it was bound to fail.

Katrina was the most anticipated natural disaster in American history, and still government managed to fail at every level.

For the brutal fact is, government tends toward bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but ineffective action. Government depends on planning, but planners can never really anticipate the inevitable complexity of events. And American government is inevitably divided and power is inevitably devolved.

For example, the Army Corps of Engineers had plenty of money (Louisiana received more than any other state), but that spending was carved up into little pork barrel projects. There were ample troops nearby to maintain order, but they were divided between federal and state authorities and constrained by regulations.

This preparedness plan is government as it really is. It reminds us that canning Michael Brown or appointing some tough response czar will not change the endemic failures at the heart of this institutional collapse.

So of course we need limited but energetic government. But liberals who think this disaster is going to set off a progressive revival need to explain how a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore America's faith in big government.