9/11: How much progress in four years? (2)

How ready are we for another catastrophic attack?  It's not a speculative question after the last two weeks: Failure at every turn Knight-Ridder 09/10/05 (my emphasis):

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast, there is little argument that the response was botched. But an extensive review of official actions in the days just before and after Katrina's landfall Aug. 29 reveals a depth of government hesitancy and a "not-my-job" attitude that likely cost many lives.

The Department of Homeland Security, facing the first major catastrophe since it was created, failed to issue a critical disaster declaration until more than a day after the storm. The White House never appointed a coordinator to monitor the developing storm and its aftermath. ...

But what's clear is that four years after terrorists, on another late-summer day, flew hijacked aircraft into buildings in New York and outside Washington, the United States is still struggling with how to respond to catastrophe - even when it is preceded by days of public anticipation and warning.

A final accounting of what went wrong and what went right will take months, perhaps longer. Some agencies performed splendidly: The Coast Guard launched missions to rescue people trapped by the flooding as soon as the weather permitted.

But it is already clear that a multitude of local, state and federal officials and agencies failed the people in Katrina's path.

This is a long article dealing with various aspects of the emergency response.  This one was news to me (my emphasis):

Perhaps the most startling failure came in the reaction - or the apparent lack of one - from federal, state and local officials to the discovery that New Orleans' fragile levee system had collapsed hours before Katrina even made landfall. Engineers and emergency planners had warned for years that such a collapse would be catastrophic for the below-sea-level city and the people who lived there.

Yet the 5 a.m. first report of the breach failed to spark action. The commander of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers, Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, finally confirmed the breach between and 3 and 6 p.m. Aug. 29 and reported it to headquarters in Vicksburg, Miss.

The mayor had told reporters during a 1 p.m. news conference that there was an unconfirmed report of a levee break, but he quickly turned to other topics. Shortly before nightfall, a FEMA official, back from a helicopter survey of the city, reported the breach to his colleagues in Baton Rouge, then broke the news to the mayor.

Still, no concerted effort was made to reach the thousands of people whose houses were rapidly filling with water. As many crawled from their flooded bedrooms into attics, and some hacked their way onto their roofs, much of the world went to sleep thinking that New Orleans had survived the worst.