that only bashed FEMA? Government officials at all levels made mistakes. However, the primary responsibility for evacuating New Orleans was at the local and state levels. Had they done their job, thousands fewer people would've been in the emergency zone and few people would've died. FEMA's job is to come in after a disaster and help with the response. They did, but their response wasn't very good in many cases but some of that was attributable to the difficulties of getting a massive amount of supplies into a region where the transportation and communications infrastructure was so heavily damaged.