It was predicted

Here's an article from September of 2004 that makes it clear that the nightmare in New Orleans was indeed predicted. The article is entitled, "Experts paint doomsday scenario if Ivan strikes city". Here's an excerpt:

People floating through a polluted stew to treetops, competing with fire ants for a dry perch -- a direct hit here by Hurricane Ivan could be that horrifying, Louisiana storm damage experts say.

With New Orleans' saucer-shaped topography that dips as much as nine feet below sea level, there's nowhere for water to go if a storm surge is strong enough to top levees ringing the city.

"Those folks who remain, should the city flood, would be exposed to all kinds of nightmares from buildings falling apart to floating in the water having nowhere to go," Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Public Health Center, said Tuesday.

And that's not all. Flood waters, in addition to collecting standard household and business garbage and chemicals, would flow through chemical plants, "so there's the potential of pretty severe contamination," van Heerden said.

LSU's hurricane experts have spent years developing computer models and taking surveys to predict when hurricanes could flood the city and how many people would choose to wait out the storm at home. Both results paint grim pictures.

The enormity of the evacuation problem was also predicted:

The rescue operation, meanwhile, would be among the world's biggest since World War II, when Allied Forces rescued mostly British soldiers from Dunkirk, France, and brought them across the English Channel in 1940, van Heerden predicted.

How can the administration say that nobody anticipated how bad it could get? It's just not true.