Credible sources, including FEMA, predicted that one years in advance.
Check out the October 2004 issue of National Geographic:
> The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
> Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
> When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
On the other hand, I'm not really willing to give Bush much credit here. The middle of a disaster is not the right time for pedantry.
Rich cities in california were also a dysfunctional mess dealing with fires. It was only when the same problem happened in the same places in subsequent years that they had a reasonably solid plan together and working.
They were not, and the fact was well-known in advance. Their limit was a category 3 hurricane and there had been years of passing the buck about upgrading the levees to give the city a shot.
Then Katrina happened and everyone who had passed the buck claimed that it wasn't their fault.
It's funny because the very idea that 'the government will save us from a big disaster' is a fairly new concept.
Some governments are 'kind of' prepared for some kinds of problems - i.e. the Swiss are prepared for some kinds of invasions, surely the Dutch have preparations for floods.
But for unforeseen disasters (the levy breach in New Orleans), it's harder and we're mostly on our own.
New Orleans is also very poor and is socially dysfunctional along a whole other set of vectors, I'll bet $100 it's pretty correlated with dealing with disaster. If it were some well run mid-sized city in New England it would have been another story. (Plus the possibility of racism which is to vague to consider in a paragraph).