AS one presses the TV remote control, it is hard to take one's eyes off from the evidence of Titanic ineptitude of the federal officials which compounded the devastation of the over 500,000 thousand poor and dispossessed Americans. The multitudes of dead arising from Hurricane Katrina, one of the fiercest ever to hit the eastern seaboard of the US, shows so graphically again, if we needed reminding after the Asian tsunami, the destruction that Mother Nature has at her disposal. in the world's most advanced country, with its most sophisticated storm and flood defenses, the death toll seems surreal.

Katrina left such an indelible signature on the communities in New orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, and the southern Gulf Coast that generations will remember it with shock. With much of central New orleans finally cleared of devastated refugees, search teams widened operations to outlying streets, moving from house to house with orders to evacuate all remaining residents who escaped death. Troops in uniform are patrolling the streets, rescuers are hunting for stragglers, and New orleans looks like a wrecked ghost town as the evacuation nears completion and the authorities direct efforts to the grim task of collecting decomposed bodies in a ghastly landscape awash in numberless corpses.

Even in such a disaster criminals show up with their despicable acts of rape and murder. To restore order, police have shot several people and killed at least two after gunmen opened fire at contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs. Many mortuary teams already have begun the gruesome task of collecting corpses still floating in floodwaters, trapped inside buildings or abandoned on highways after the devastating storm that deluged the city a week ago. Authorities warn that the death count will rise exponentially. Although some floodwater has drained out of the city streets, a significant amount of New orleans remains drowned. Federal emergency and city officials predict that water drainage operations will take weeks and maybe months, provided no more rain pours in during the intermittent recovery and rescue phase.

The aftermath blame game and finger pointing have already started criss-crossing the conscience of the nation. The state and local government officials must share some of the blame, but only the federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were not mobilised timely to respond to the human misery never seen ever before in US history.

The Chicago Tribune reports that: "USS Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday -- without patients." Experience and experts tell us that the first 72 hours after a natural calamity are the most opportune window during which prompt mobilisation of emergency resources can and save many lives. Unfortunately, the actions taken after Katrina were anything but prompt and

befitting the magnitude of the disaster. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.

The Bush administration's problems in the crisis seemed to crystallize in a dramatic appearance on the NBC program "Meet the Press" by Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish near New orleans. Sobbing, he told of an emergency management official (EMo) receiving phone calls from his mother, who, trapped in a nursing home, pleaded day after day for rescue. Assured by federal officials, the man promised her repeatedly that help was on the way.

"Every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? is somebody coming?' And the EMo said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night."

Mr. Broussard angrily denounced the country's leadership. "We have been abandoned by our own country," he said. "it's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."

The larger picture of death is still very bleak. There is no sure way to know or say how many were swept away and had died in the hurricane or were waiting to be rescued after the city's levees burst. one morgue at the St. Gabriel Prison near New orleans was expecting 1,000 to 2,000 bodies. Hundreds were missing in nearby Chalmette. A week

after Katrina devastated the Gulf coast, New orleans is still a partly submerged city of abandoned homes and ruined businesses, dead and decomposed human bodies in house attics or floating in deserted streets of misery.

As the effects of the devastation unfolded and spread across the nation, 20 states have already opened their shelters, homes and schools to the hurricane refugees. But transporting such a huge distressed population of New orleans to other parts of the country has created enormous overcrowding and strains. in Texas alone, where nearly half the victims (over 225,000) are jamming stadiums, civic centers, and hotels, Gov. Rick Perry said the state's capacity was almost exhausted. Thousands of people were also arriving at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.

As shown on CNN and other TV channels, there were holdouts in the city, unknown numbers of people who refused to leave but were unable to because they had no transport and no money for hotels or motels to stay in. They wee warned by officials of dreadful days and months ahead in a destroyed and abandoned city without food, water, electricity, telephone, medical car, and other necessities, only the spectre of cholera, typhoid or mosquitoes carrying malaria or the West Nile virus await them.

As rescue helicopters and boat crews searched previously populated flooded areas for survivors and officials focused for the first time on finding, collecting, and counting the dead, Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, warned that Americans must brace for nome gruesome sights in the days ahead. "We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Mr. Chertoff said on the "Fox News Sunday" television program. "We are going

to uncover people who died hiding in their house."

it is hard to comprehend that people of the world's most powerful and resourceful nation would find themselves absolutely helpless and at the mercy of a killer hurricane which showed no mercy whatsoever. Bangladesh, which is always open to nature's fury with its near sea level base altitude, has much to experience and learn from the disaster. Katrina killed thousands of Americans, and displaced and dispossessed half a million from their homes. Reconstructions and rebuilding of houses and businesses could easily reach over $40 billion. The entire nation is giving charitable contributions. A calamity of this magnitude could easily kill millions in the coastal areas of Bangladesh, and property damage would easily impoverish the entire nation. Given our meager resources, we must have maximum preparedness at all times ready to respond to save whoever and whatever we can.

Whenever a nation is in distress or human beings are in misery, it has never mattered which nation and which human beings, Americans have always responded with money, materials, and prayers. in every natural disaster or crime against humanity anywhere in the world, the victims always wait to hear when America is coming.

Whenever Bangladesh is stuck by natural disaster America always came to our rescue with money and materials. The generous American people know that Bangladesh is a poor country. Nearly a million Americans are in distress, struck by a natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions. Bangladesh may not have much money and materials to give to the Americans. However, we must show our gestures whatever way we can, with our tears and prayers.