The US had massive relief on the shores of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, within 48 hours of the tsunami hitting with no warning. It set up a tent city for a MILLION refugees in Kosovo in less than 2 weeks.
There was plenty of warning for Katrina and there weren't oceans to cover to get evacuees out or at least fed. We have seen a screwup of unbelievable proportions. It's beyond incompetence, it seems to be the work of outright malice on FEMA's part. The FEMA director is a complete clueless moron who has no qualifications in emergency management whatsoever. He seems to have gotten the job by being the ex-college-roommate of the former director, who wasn't so hot either.
FEMA was a bureaucratic mess in the late 80's and early 90's that got a bad rep from Hurricane Andrew and other debacles but had been shaped up into a somewhat competent agency in the mid and late 90's. But that's all history now.
Some interesting reading:
Article about FEMA director Mike Brown's background running a horse breeder's associationArticle about how FEMA was destroyed