Examining the reaction to Hurricane Katrina

Re “Why FEMA Was Missing in Action,” Sept. 5

If the American public accepts the administration’s shifting of blame for the failure to respond to Katrina from Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to local authorities, it should also challenge the massive spending of those federal agencies to do the jobs they now say belong to states, cities and counties.

Had a terrorist blown up the levees instead of Katrina, should we then have expected President Bush to blame the failure to respond on local government? Does anyone recall Roosevelt blaming Pearl Harbor on the mayor of Honolulu?

RICHARD BROCK

Laguna Niguel

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The main problem was not FEMA. Your article forgot to ask questions such as: Why didn’t the city have sufficient food/water and portable toilets in the Superdome? Why weren’t the police ready for looting? What about the old people and patients who couldn’t evacuate by themselves? Also, why didn’t the governor have a doomsday plan? As a former five-year member of this county’s emergency operations center, it’s understood that planning for disasters has to be done at the local level. Bush’s only mistake was not anticipating just how incompetent these local yokels were.

ROBERT MENDOZA

Los Angeles

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Re “Make a plan, now,” editorial, Sept. 3

I agree with most everything that you said in this editorial, but I was very surprised that you made no mention of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which also killed numerous people and disrupted thousands of lives. President Clinton, Gov. Pete Wilson, Mayor Richard Riordan and FEMA all worked together very quickly to get the job done in a very professional manner.

MARV WALKER

Northridge

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Niall Ferguson tells us “natural disasters have no moral significance” (Opinion, Sept. 5). He is wrong. Natural disasters do “serve to remind us of our common vulnerability as human beings in the face of a pitiless nature,” but they also expose the moral choices we have made as a society about who to protect and who is to have access to resources. We all face hazards beyond our control. The moral significance of Katrina is that while we are all equally vulnerable, we do not all have access to the resources needed for survival.

LEN SCHNEIDERMAN

Dean Emeritus

UCLA School of Social Welfare