WASHINGTON, Feb 11: The former director of the federal disaster agency testified on Friday that the White House was warned earlier than it admits about the rupture of New Orleans levees by Hurricane Katrina and the city’s flooding.

Michael Brown, who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) when Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast on Aug 29, told a US Senate panel investigating the government’s slow response to the disaster that he had personally alerted the White House on the night the storm hit.

Mr Brown said he had phoned White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin on Monday night, telling him of the destruction under way after a FEMA official had reported seeing breached levees during helicopter overflights of the Louisiana city.

“I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for about 10 years was coming true,” he said.

“I really don’t recall if the president got (on the line) ... But I never worried about whether I talked directly to the president because I knew that in speaking to Joe I was talking directly to the president,” said Brown, who was ousted from office amid stiff criticism of his agency’s response to Katrina, the single largest natural disaster in US history.

Officials of President George W. Bush’s administration have insisted they were alerted to the flooding only on Tuesday.

Critics say the administration’s response was too little and too late, and contributed to the loss of more than 1,300 lives in four states, including 1,100 in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.

The White House on Friday swiftly contested Brown’s testimony that the administration knew about the levees before the timeframe they had claimed.

“There were conflicting reports coming in, in the initial aftermath of the storm in regards to the levee system,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

“Some were saying it was overtopped, some were saying it was breached. And, again, we knew of the flooding that was going on, that’s why our top priority was focused on saving lives. The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority, and that’s the way it should be.”

On August 30, the day after Katrina hit, Bush, vacationing in Texas, said he was relieved that New Orleans had escaped the worst of the storm. Later that day the president announced he was cutting short his vacation to return to Washington, given the extent of the damage along the southeastern coast and the need to coordinate rescue operations.

Brown told the Senate panel that a FEMA employee had overflown New Orleans by helicopter twice on Monday afternoon, at 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm local time, and had warned him that he had seen breached levees, which prompted him to telephone the White House.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the first flood warning by a federal official arrived at the Interior Department on August 29 at 9:27 pm local time, and at the White House at midnight.

Mr McClellan called The New York Times story “sad and irresponsible.” —AFP