Are we safer today than we were on 9/11/01

The WaPo looks at the lessons of the response to Katrina and finds the DC disaster plan sorely lacking.

In all, federal, state and local governments have spent more than $2 billion to protect the Washington area since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Despite these efforts, security officials in the region concede that they fear another major terrorist strike would result in the kind of chaos and confusion seen along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

...On the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation's capital lacks a comprehensive way to tell people what to do in a state of emergency, especially a terrorist attack with no warning, according to law enforcement and Homeland Security officials involved in emergency preparations.

"What we lack is a coordinated public information system in the event of a major incident," said David Snyder, a member of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' homeland security task force. "What we need is a system that will function instantaneously and automatically every time. . . . That doesn't exist now."

If it doesn't exist in DC, you can sure if disaster hits your town - you're on your own. God forbid all of those smug Americans who have heaping blame on the victims for not saving themselves, will have to eat those words while they're looking at locked stores of food and water someday.