Who's To Blame For Katrina Outages?

Katrina shows that the federal disaster agency FEMA is absolutely incompetent when dealing with disasters -- no doubt, it caused many deaths and untold suffering. But who's to blame for the network and wireless outages?Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco faulted telecom providers for the collapse of the state's wireless network. In the days ahead, other fingers will be pointed as well.This is one instance, though, where the blame falls squarely on Mother Nature. When entire towns get swept into the sea, and New Orleans suffered through a flood of biblical proportions, there was nothing that could be done to keep the networks up and running.On the other hand, FEMA should have been on the scene quickly, and it should have been there with a techie corps to set up temporary networks. So FEMA's not to blame for the outages, but it is to blame for not getting new networks put up quickly.Considering that FEMA actually turned away truckloads of water and supplies from the disaster area so that they couldn't reach people, it's no surprise it wasn't ready to get networks set up quickly.