As I write this, it is unclear how many people have been killed, or will ultimately die as a result of this storm.  What is clear is that America has received a wake-up call and it came in the form of Hurricane Katrina. 

Hurricane Katrina calls into question our preparedness as a nation to deal with any kind of major disaster, whether it is a natural disaster, or a disaster resulting from a terrorist attack.

This month marks the fourth anniversary of the September 11^th attack on our nation.  Our country saw the devastation that could be caused by a terrorist attack, recognized our vulnerabilities and supposedly set about the task of protecting Americans, as best we could, from disaster.

Hurricane Katrina calls into question the efforts that have taken place at the Department of Homeland Security to provide protection and relief for Americans.

The Administration knew about the vulnerabilities of the levees in New Orleans, they knew about the level of poverty that exists in the Gulf states that would hamper evacuation plans and they should have known at a minimum, the day before the Hurricane hit, that they would need more law enforcement, rescue, medical and evacuation personnel.

And herein lays the problem.  They knew about those problems, as we know about many problems and vulnerabilities that exist throughout other cities nationwide, yet we have been slow to act to improve the situation.

In prior years, local officials in New Orleans recommended a plan that would have cost 14 billion dollars to reinforce the levee and pump system that keeps New Orleans safe.  The state of Louisiana said that the project was too big, and the pleas for help from state and local officials fell on deaf ears in the White House and Congress.

Let's put the New Orleans levee restructuring in perspective: we spend over $1 billion a week on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and we just handed out $14 billion to oil companies in President Bush's Energy Bill passed just this summer.

What is the ultimate lesson of Katrina?  The lesson is that the officials that were supposed to provide support, safety and security to the people failed.

The result was a situation where every emergency coordinator knew that disaster was imminent; however, the existing emergency infrastructure was not there to remove people from harm's way and by doing so, save their lives.

What of the poor, who, hearing the calls for evacuation couldn't afford to get out of the path of the hurricane?  Is our plan to just allow people to die if they can't afford to get out of the way of imminent disaster?

What of the elderly or the disabled, who, knew they should evacuate, but did not have a way to get out because of the frailty of their health?  Is our plan just to cross our fingers and hope that someone will swing by and pick them up?

And what of the thousands of people, who when they couldn't get out of the city of New Orleans, followed the directives of local government officials to go to large shelters like the Superdome or the Convention Center and found afterwards that there were not even basic necessities like food and water?  What can we say to these people?

What is clear is that we as a nation are unprepared for large-scale disasters, be they natural, or God forbid in this time of terror, man-made.

This cannot be allowed to stand.

We cannot as local, state and federal officials, draw up plans, have a one-day mock disaster drill and then pat ourselves on the back and say that our job is done here.

The government is here to provide the infrastructure that is necessary to prevent deaths from an imminent disaster and step in immediately afterwards to ensure that deaths do not result from the destruction caused by that disaster.

That rule should apply to everyone, no matter their income, race, or religion.

The lesson that Hurricane Katrina needs to have taught our government officials is that the current emergency management infrastructure could not handle a disaster the size of Katrina and that we have to streamline and reform our disaster preparedness and response and we have to do it today.

There are some serious questions to be asked:  Why with several days' notice about this storm, were more people not evacuated?  Where was the plan to evacuate people who did not have the money or ability to evacuate themselves?  When the size and strength of the storm was known, why wasn't a response team in place to go into affected areas immediately?  Why was federal funding to reinforce the levee system cut when it would have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars?  And, given that this disaster was the first large scale test of the new Department of Homeland Security and their Federal Emergency Management Agency, does this new structure improve or hamper disaster prevention, response and relief?

These are all important questions.  As your member of Congress I will be fighting for answers and working to ensure that our nation's first priority should be to provide security, safety and infrastructure here at home.