I think there is enough information out there to conclude that someone dropped the ball regarding Katrina.
Furthermore, I think the decision to divert allocated funds from Louisiana that was to be used to sure up the levees was a contributer to this catastrophe.
I am going to provide an overview so that others with more time can research all of the specifics.
First, what we know for certain is that the homeland security funds requested by Louisiana for the purpose of upgrading the levees was denied and diverted to Iraq.
This is from an Associated Press article:
AP
Katrina also gives the Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for flood control in New Orleans, the opportunity to modify the network of levees it uses to keep water out of the city. The structures that are currently in place are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, but the Corps has been considering an upgrade for several years that could handle a Category 5 storm.
As noted above, it has been well known that the New Orleans levees could only withstand a catagory 3 hurricane and that an upgrade to handle a catagory 5 hurricane was needed.
The question is; was the money that was withheld and diverted to Iraq from Homeland Security the money that was to cover the upgrade in the levees to withstand a catagory 5 hurricane?
It is also important to note that the government estimated that Katrina would be a catagory 5 hurricane over a week ago and then it turned out to be a catagory 4 hurricane. However, if they estimated that the hurricane would be a catagory 5 or even 4 hurricane and the levees could only handle a catagory 3 hurricane why were they not prepared?
Furthermore, all of the property and casualty insurers knew that the hurricane would be a catagory 5 or 4 hurricane and that the levees were independently rated as only being able to withstand a catagory 3 hurricane.
These ratings are used by P&C firms and held by a third party in a central database in order to assess risk and to help properly underwrite flood insurance polices.
Moreover, a company named AIR Worldwide has a bunch of PHD's that do catastrophic event modeling for the P&C industry and they had modeled the hurricane and determined with relative certainty that the hurricane would hit the coast.
Therefore, the P&C insurers knew in advance that either a catagtory 5 or 4 hurricane would hit the coast and that the New Orleans levees could only withstand a catagory 3 hurricane.
Knowing this I am sure the P&C firms sent their K street lobbyists over to the appropriate administration officials to ask for financial support even before the hurricane hit.
How can the Homeland Security department and FEMA not be prepared when the P&C industry knew that a breach of the levees was better than 50/50 and furthermore the administration knew that the hurricane was predicted to be catagory 5 or 4 and they knew the levees were rated as only being able to handle a catagory 3 hurricane.
Something is not right and someone somewhere in this administration screwed up. Further research is needed to find out if the funding cuts were indeed the funds that were to cover the expense of upgrading the levees to handle a catagory 5 hurricane.
Finally, if a breach of the levees was statistically more probable then not then why was the government not prepared to provide immediate relief to potential victims?