The wide extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans stretched beyond ruined homes and stranded families: The local, state and the federal government all took a beating to their image in the field of emergency preparedness.

According to the National Response Plan, disaster prevention and response planning are first and foremost a responsibility of the local government of the affected area. Once local resources run out, the burden climbs the bureaucratic ladder, going from county to state until it reaches the federal government.

In light of this responsibility, many were outraged to find after the storm hit that, according to a Congressional report, the Louisiana government had been aware of the inadequacy of its emergency response system for decades.

The report, called Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared, states that "when it received warnings of Katrina's approach, the state had reason to know that its emergency response systems were likely to fail ... and fail they did." On the federal level, former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown admitted that he knew the weekend before Katrina made landfall that neither his agency nor the federal government were prepared to deal with the effects of the storm.

The deluge of criticism of the local, state and federal government focused largely on long-term mismanagement of FEMA and the lack of leadership in the aftermath of the storm. While housing tens of thousands of refugees would be no easy task for any city, temporary housing was clearly underprepared and poorly managed.

The major example is the relief site set up at the Louisiana Superdome. Designed to serve 800, the site was overwhelmed by more than 30,000 people and became no more than an endless waiting room. Some saw the insufficient aid as a mark of racial discrimination, and singer Kanye West caused a stir when he announced on national television that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

A poll conducted by ABC news on September 2, 2005, showed that citizens were pointing the finger at a variety of groups and individuals. About 44 percent said they blamed President George W. Bush for the chaos that ensued the storm, and 75 percent agreed that the local and state governments were inadequately prepared.

Not all news was bad. Before the storm began, FEMA attempted to stave off catastrophe by preemptively deploying supplies and even refrigerated mortuary trucks to the area. After the storm, FEMA provided housing relief and paid hotel bills for over 700,000 displaced people. Many requested FEMA trailers for temporary housing, and while some were sent, the supply was far below the demand.

The United States Coast Guard is on the short list of government entities that was actually praised for its emergency response. The Coast Guard rescued over 35,000 refugees stranded in a flooded New Orleans.

As the crisis began to resolve in the following year, the federal government resolved to improve national preparedness primarily through improving communication between departments and agencies at the local, state and federal levels.