**Fema freaked as well, but who ever had to deal with an emergency at this scale?**
FEMA has PLENTY to answer for, but responsibilty for this nightmare isn't IT!!!
They were slow...I don't think anybody realized how big the disaster would be in the prepositioning stages. And there seemed to be a true lack of good coordination until after day 3...Fema and the state and the city and the NG worked at cross purposes longer than they technically had to. Whoever's at fault (and I am not laying real blame...from an outside pov, it looked like everybody got kinda freekout froze for at least 12 hours more than they should have, but I certainly don't have the skinny on why it happened), made it worse than it had to be, but by day four things hit their stride and began to click. About a day longer than normal, but this was a huge event.
Things are always bad, screwy and miserable at the beginning of a disaster. But this one does take the cake.