WASHINGTON (CP) -- The heads of the Sept. 11 commission, who once lambasted top U.S. officials for failing to heed warnings about suicide hijackers, blasted them again Wednesday for inaction before Katrina struck.
Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton also produced a dismal scorecard on progress by President George W. Bush and Congress in implementing safety measures proposed after 19 months studying the terrorist attacks in 2001.
That lack of action cost lives as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and swamped New Orleans, they said.
''If Congress does not act, people will die. I cannot put it more simply than that,'' said Kean, who called it a ''scandal'' that more hadn't been done in four years to improve disaster response.
''What is frustrating to us is that (these are) many of the same problems we saw in 9-11.''
The two cited the failure of rescue workers to be able to communicate with each other, the fact that no one was clearly in command and the government's failure to assess risk-prone areas of the United States like New Orleans and properly allocate disaster funds.
''There was no unified command structure,'' said Kean, a former Republican New Jersey governor.
''The mayor is saying one thing, the governor says another. The president is in the state and the governor learns about it on TV.''
The Bush administration should have marshalled a massive national response including troops and helicopters before the storm struck, they said.
''Anyone watching that storm knew it was going to affect Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana,'' said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman.
''This is not a disaster for the mayor of New Orleans to deal with.''
Their criticism was echoed Wednesday by a Senate committee that began investigating the bungled response to Katrina.
''At this point, we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy,'' said Senator Susan Collins, Republican chairperson of the Homeland Security committee.
''Instead, we witnessed what appeared to be a sluggish initial response.''
The crisis, said Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, ''has shaken the public's confidence in the ability of government at all levels to protect them in a crisis.''
Bush has been given a major portion of the blame, with polls pegging his approval rating at an all-time low and suggesting he's lost core support.
He uncharacteristically took responsibility this week for federal failings in the catastrophe.
''That's an extraordinary statement for this administration,'' said Hamilton.
Bush will try to start making amends with Americans during a televised speech Thursday.
The president, sharply faulted for failing to sense the magnitude of the catastrophe and quickly send in troops, acknowledged serious questions linger about whether the United States is capable of dealing with another severe storm or terrorist attack four years after 9-11.
But throughout the aftermath of Katrina, federal officials have taken pains to note problems at the local and state levels as the flurry of assessing blame began.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been criticized by some for gaps in evacuation plans that didn't include some 100,000 residents without a way to get out and a Superdome that was ill-equipped as a refuge.
Others note Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, while frantically calling for federal action, didn't immediately give Washington a specific accounting of what she needed or relinquish state control of police and National Guard troops.
And former top disaster official Michael Brown, once head of the much-maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency, resigned this week after he became the focus of outrage.
But many see him as merely a scapegoat for the failings of others.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff presides over FEMA, which has been stripped of much of its expertise, and a department with no disaster plan when the local response is wiped out as it was in the hurricane.
Kean and Hamilton said it's hard to understand why Chertoff waited until 36 hours after Katrina hit to declare an ''incidence of national significance,'' a classification that triggers the highest level of federal response.
Meanwhile, U.S. legislators wrangled Wednesday over attempts by Democrats to establish an independent inquiry into Katrina along the lines of the Sept. 11 commission.
Republicans have rejected the need for that type of inquiry, despite widespread support for it among Americans in opinion polls.
