In an e-mail, Murray, who is director of the University of Houston's Center for Public Policy, wrote: "Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."

In his Thursday speech, President Bush asked each evacuee to register with FEMA because "we need to know who you are." But evacuees who have called FEMA daily haven't been able to get through to register.

Survivors such as Louise Dilsenroth and Sandra Brent, who has diabetes, have had similar problems in Mississippi. The women spent hours last week waiting in line to get a number that would allow them to enter a Red Cross facility to speak with an official. Brent said she had spent three days so far, trying to get a number. She has not had access to insulin since the hurricane hit.

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller wants to know where she might find some of the $12 billion Congress appropriated for disaster relief two weeks ago. Her city houses 25,000 evacuees but depends on its own limited resources and private charities to help them. School districts are having the same problem. Says Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Administrators: "The federal government really hasn't provided much of anything."