Ok.
So does that mean I'm being asked to believe that our response in Haiti was good because we had air traffic controllers in place quickly, but our response to Katrina sucked because we didn't have any air traffic controllers?
I don't think we could land planes in NOLA anyways. ATC has nothing to do with Katrina response, or with Haiti response.
ATC doesn't get potable water or edible food in. It is resource-inefficient to try to fly in food and water for a refugee population of that size. Need ground/rail/shipping capabilities.
Our involvement with ATC for Haiti is because we're the only country nearby with the capability to attempt to coordinate replacement of their existing ATC infrastructure with our own, in as seamless a manner as possible.
We didn't need to do that with NOLA. We just shut down the airport and wrote it off, and used ground transport.
We might be using the airport for some small relief shipments, but the real relief shipments will be coming in droves, via ships, once the ports are cleared of any damage and made functional by the emergency crews airlifted there. But it takes a couple days to get containers packaged appropriate to the task, get them on a ship, and sail them 1000+ miles. That's what is happening right now.
Either blaming or lauding FEMA in this effort is ridiculous because it hasn't happened in the US and our country has no obligation to respond to it. Also, FEMA would simply be locating supplies and shipping contractors based in the US and then alerting the Marine forces in Haiti to their arrival date and location. This is largely a US military mission from what I've read so far.