Where the blame lies

President Bush and Congress have promised to investigate the feds' response to Katrina. Meanwhile, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, editorializing in virtual exile and understandably upset, has called for every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be fired.

While the Times-Picayune's intemperate suggestion would throw the baby out with the flood water, we welcome an investigation of the government's response.

But let's not just blindly condemn the federal government without probing what the state and local responsibilities were.

Indeed, as the waters recede, charges are surfacing that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco share much, if not most, of the blame for the government's incompetent response.

They ordered an 11th-hour mandatory evacuation only after being urged to do so by - oops! - President Bush. Even then, the "mandatory" evacuation wasn't, and tens of thousands stayed. Meanwhile, buses that could have ferried the poor out of the besieged city stood unused and in silent formation this week in flood waters. Instead, thousands were sent to the Superdome and Convention Center, where there was neither adequate food and water nor security.

Both the governor and the mayor seem to have completely ignored written evacuation plans - and failed to learn from the Hurricane Ivan scare of a year ago and a hurricane drill 13 months before Katrina.

Instead of calmly looking back and documenting such failures, some are recklessly and irrationally charging racism in the storm's aftermath. Of course, that, in itself, is outrageously racist.

"The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace," Bob Williams, a Mount St. Helens-era Washington state legislator, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday, "due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city.

"Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. ... If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved."

Let's not point fingers. Let's point to facts.