By Bruce Alpert and Bill Walsh, New Orleans Times Picayune, July 8, 2007

8 Jul 2007 // Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says in a recent report that not only did FEMA not implement the Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan for Hurricane Katrina, but some key agency officials hadn't even seen it the day before the hurricane struck. In the report, the group cites an e-mail message sent Aug., 28, 2005, the day before Katrina hit Louisiana, by FEMA Deputy Director Patrick Rhode. It went to the agency's deputy chief of staff and the special assistant to then-FEMA director Michael Brown with the subject line "copy of New Orleans cat plan." In the e-mail, Rhode says, "I never got one -- I think Brown got my copy. Did you get one?" Had the agency's own report been heeded, the citizens group says, FEMA would have been prepared for as many as 350,000 people trapped in New Orleans, and stored before the storm a minimum of two Meals Ready to Eat, one gallon of water and 8 pounds of ice per day for each. "CREW's report catalogues the government's failures in responding to the most significant natural disaster ever faced by the United States," the group's executive director, Melanie Sloan, said.