Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy | featured news

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, having learned Hurricane Katrina’s harsh lessons, is winning praise from disaster specialists and elected officials for its rapid response to Hurricane Sandy, but weeks into battling the devastation, the agency is confronting another challenge: the reality of its own limitations.

Kim Bondy was in New Orleans seven years ago when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, and scores of patients died in flooded hospitals cut off from power. She never thought that she might face that danger herself.

Following Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, FEMA became a national punching bag, ridiculed for its slow and cumbersome response to the disaster along the Gulf Coast. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its administrator W. Craig Fugate are garnering more positive reviews from public officials in northeastern states hit by the superstorm, as well as from disaster-management experts.