Katrina puts focus on disaster recovery system

Government officials estimated the the death toll from Hurricane Katrina is probably "in the thousands." New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin told NBC's Today that "it is not unreasonable to assume that at least 10,000 people are dead" in his city. Anger at the stumbling response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reached the boiling point, with the New Orleans Times-Picayune  writing an open letter to President Bush calling for the mass firing of "every single official at the agency."

- see this story from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)

PLUS: The first of the much hyped "portable hospitals" touted by government officials as a key to response in disasters and terrorist attacks spent most of the weekend sidelined. Story

ALSO: A computer system developed after 9/11 to channel patients toward available beds in a disaster is not being used by FEMA. Story

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