FEMA Official Says Agency Disregarded His Warnings

FEMA Official Says Agency Disregarded His Warnings: "For 16 critical hours, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, including former director Michael D. Brown, dismissed urgent eyewitness accounts by FEMA's only staffer in New Orleans that Hurricane Katrina had broken the city's levee system the morning of Aug. 29 and was causing catastrophic flooding, the staffer told the Senate today.

Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the 'worst possible news' for the city: the Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee."