How Did This Happen?

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Reliving a scenario earmarked for change after 9/11, officials in different agencies still couldn't communicate by radio or telephone with one another, despite generous Homeland Security grants meant to fix such problems. Others had nothing but cell phones, which predictably failed. Even the Salvation Army lost contact with 200 of its volunteers.

Meanwhile, in the strange parallel universe of Washington press conferences, federal officials regularly congratulated one another. "I think it is a source of tremendous pride to me to work with people who have pulled off this really exceptional response," Chertoff said Thursday. In an interview with National Public Radio, he was pressed six times about the misery of the 25,000 refugees at the Convention Center. Chertoff said he had not heard about any problems.

By Thursday night, the mayor of New Orleans had had enough and vented his spleen on a local radio station, WWL-AM. "This is ridiculous. I don't want to see anybody do any more press conferences," said Nagin. "We authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the President unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places," he said. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man."

By that evening, seven helicopters from the Air Force Reserve 920th Rescue Wing out of Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., had ferried hundreds of refugees onto the runway at New Orleans Lakefront Airport, where they waited in darkness to go somewhere, anywhere. Beside them, Colonel Tim Tarchick, the wing commander, screamed into his satellite phone at someone from the Emergency Operations Center. "I've got 1,000 people who have been dropped here. We're out of food, and they're starting to get tense. We need security. It's like frickin' Baghdad here. You have to take control," he yelled, straining to be heard over the thump-thump of helicopters.

"Who's running things? Nobody, as far as I can tell," he told TIME's Brian Bennett. Early Monday morning, Tarchick had told FEMA and Northcom that he and his men were ready to go. But he wasn't ordered to deploy until Tuesday afternoon--an "unacceptable" delay, he says. In 72 hours, his men rescued some 400 people. He wonders how many more they might have saved.

Louisiana Representative Jim McCrery, chair of a powerful Ways and Means subcommittee, told TIME, "I've talked to the White House staff. I've talked to FEMA. I've talked with the Army. And, of course, I've talked with the state office of emergency preparedness. And nobody, federal or state, seems to know how to implement a decision, if we can get a decision." As in any war, the best weapons mean nothing without leadership and communication. On Friday, hours after even the President had shifted to calling the government's response "not acceptable," the No. 2 at FEMA sounded as though he had been monitoring a different hurricane. "I am actually very impressed with the mobilization of man and machine to help our friends in this unfortunate area," Patrick Rhode told TIME. "I think it's one of the most impressive search-and-rescue operations this country has ever conducted domestically." That day, members of Congress called for hearings.

--With reporting by Brian Bennett/New Orleans, Cathy Booth Thomas/Baton Rouge, Massimo Calabresi, Sally Donnelly, Mark Thompson, Karen Tumulty, Douglas Waller and Adam Zagorin/ Washington, Jeff Chu/New York and Jeanne DeQuine and Kathie Klarreich/Miami