Everyone under the sun seems to have someone to blame when it comes to Hurricane Katrina, with those on the left blaming Bush and more rational people looking to the enormous sewerage pipe of corruption that seems to have been endemic to New Orleans and Louisiana - although I think that the criticism of FEMA seems to be justified too.
A number of people have compared behaviour in Louisiana with behaviour in Japan. It is worth noting that, although not as bad as Katrina, Japan is right now experiencing a couple of weeks of torrential rainfall (10cm of rain per hour in some parts of Tokyo) with (yet) another typhoon on its way to add to the rainfall, although the more important comparison is with the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake. In Japan, despite intense destruction, civil order did not break down and indeed there are accounts of the Yakuza (Japan's gangsters) helping to bring aid while the government seemed tie all its aid up in red tape. In New Orleans such a civil order clearly did not exist and its lack undoubtedly helped make things worse.
The governmental red-tape effect is precisely what we see in every disaster (witness the UN's efforts in the new year Tsunami) and is not something that surprises me. It should be clear that when it comes to large scale disasters the government is not your friend and your local community is. If the community is united then you will suffer less in the aftermath of a disaster. If you don't know your neighbours and they don't know each other then the community effort will be slower and less than it might be and you end up fighting each other instead of cooperating.
Finally, did anyone in the US note that Communist China has just seen at least 70 deaths from a typhoon? or that
Serious flooding throughout southern and eastern China this year has killed more than 1,000 and left hundreds missing, presumed dead.
The PRC has got government control at a level that makes big-government lovers in the EU and US drool with envy yet it manages to kill thousands in typhoons, more thousands in mine disasters and seems to prefer denying the existence of diseases such as SARS or bird flu to trying to erradicate them.