The images from New Orleans could just as easily come from Mogadishu. People, all their

possessions stuffed into plastic bags, walking, to where they didn’t know. Young children their hands outstretched to grab food offered by relief volunteers. Snipers firing on evacuation helicopters and hospitals.

The desperation in Louisiana was first met with great sympathy. Americans continue to generously give financial help for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and portions of Alabama and Mississippi on Monday. On Tuesday, levees holding Lake Pontchartrain began to leak, flooding New Orleans. Then, Americans expressed shock at the images of thousands of people huddled in squalid conditions inside the Superdome. Many cried at the news of bodies floating in the floodwaters, of lawless gangs looting and scaring residents into hiding in their ruined homes.

It is easy to second guess, but the question of how this could happen in America is one that demands answers.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three catastrophes most likely to hit America. They were

a terrorist attack on New York City, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane hitting New Orleans. As with the 9-11 attacks, the government appears ill prepared to deal with events that it predicted were likely to happen. Lack of money – the war in Iraq and tax cuts have severely strained the federal budget – are part of the problem. A lack of will is worse.

Last year, FEMA held a planning exercise around a fictional hurricane called Pam. That pretend storm was nearly as strong as Katrina and, although the levees were not breached, water flowed over them with 10 to 15 feet of water in the city. One million people needed to be evacuated under the scenario. Despite the elaborate training exercise, it appears there was no plan for evacuating and securing the city. Worse, current problems were foreseen but not addressed.

It is estimated that nearly a quarter

of New Orleans residents have no transportation. For these people, a mandatory evacuation order, which was issued Sunday, is meaningless. How were these people supposed to leave the city? Where were they supposed to go? Leaving behind a home to likely be consumed by floodwater or flattened by the wind is hard for anyone. But, middle-class families can load into their car, head away and pay for food, lodging and other necessities with their credit cards. For thousands of poor in New Orleans, this was not an option.

Why were hundreds of buses not mobilized to move the poor, elderly and sick out of the city? Why were temporary shelters – even simple military tents – not set up on dry land around the city? With hurricane season just begun, these are not merely retrospective questions.

So far questions have been met with the standard lines that the government is doing everything it can and that it will take a long time to “clean up this mess,” as President Bush called it during a briefing in Alabama.

Such hollow reassurances have done little to convince Americans that the situation is under control, that everything really is being done to help those seemingly abandoned without water, food, sanitation, medical care – the necessities of life – in New Orleans. Worse, such simple statements do nothing to help the thousands stuck

in dire conditions.

Those far from the disaster are left

to question, and hope.