President Bush, marking the one-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, promised a "better and more effective response" in the event of another hurricane, saying the catastrophic storm exposed government failure at "all levels."
Speaking at the oldest public school in New Orleans, Bush also said he supports legislation that allows tax-preferred industrial zones to promote more investment and new laws that would enable Louisiana to collect more revenue from oil companies drilling offshore so the state could invest in wetland protection to safeguard New Orleans's levees.
In a theme he has returned to several times since the storm, Bush chronicled the severity of Katrina, the costliest disaster in American history. He said the hurricane caused "flooding on a biblical scale" and "perhaps the greatest dislocation of American citizens since the dust bowl of the 1930s." He said the debris from the storm was "more than any previous disaster."
Today, he repeated that he takes "full responsibility for the government's response" and that the government has looked at both what was right and what was wrong with its response.
The Moment...
At 9:38 a.m. Central Time, they knelt for a moment of silence to mark the first breaching of the New Orleans' levees, which were built to protect the city from precisely the kind of flooding it suffered.
Residents held public and private vigils throughout the city and the region to mark the anniversary, news agencies reported.
The president began the day by meeting with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in a neighborhood where the houses are still stained with high-water marks from the flooding. They had breakfast at Betsy's Pancake House.
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