By David Morgan WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - The Bush administration'semergency management chief assured Congress on Tuesday therewould be no repeat this year of the disastrous 2005 response toHurricane Katrina response, despite concerns about overseasdeployments of National Guard troops. Federal Emergency Management Agency David Paulison said hisonce-beleaguered operation, widely blamed for a slow federalresponse in the aftermath of Katrina, has been reformed andre-energized by experienced new staff and better planning. "There is no question in my mind whatsoever that you arenot going to see another Katrina happen in this country,"Paulison told a hearing of the House of RepresentativesCommittee on Homeland Security. But the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned thesame panel that the National Guard may not be able to respondas effectively as possible to natural disasters partly becauseof deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this month, critics of the Iraq war said the Bushadministration's failure to replenish vital National Guardequipment deployed overseas had caused a shortfall in theresponse to a tornado disaster in Greensburg, Kansas. Paulison declined to predict how the overseas deployment ofNational Guard troops might affect the government's response toa major hurricane like Katrina. There are about 13,400 NationalGuard troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That would be impossible to answer," Paulison said. "But Ican tell you we do have the ability to move equipment around.We do have the ability to move (the) National Guard around andwe're going to prepare for whatever storm comes our way." Tuesday's hearing took place about two weeks before theofficial June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season, whichsaw its first named storm last week in subtropical stormAndrea. Leading storm forecasters say there is an above-averagechance that a major hurricane will hit the U.S. Gulf Coastbefore this year's season ends on Nov. 30, marking a possiblereturn to the destructive storms of 2004 and 2005. Hurricanes in 2005 devastated New Orleans and other partsof the Gulf Coast, and knocked out a swath of the country'soffshore oil platforms and coastal refineries, pushing oilprices to then-record highs. In 2004, four strong hurricanesstruck Florida, the country's biggest citrus producer. But it was FEMA's widely criticized response to the Katrinadisaster in New Orleans that forced the ouster of the agency'sformer director, Michael Brown, whom Paulison replaced. About 46,000 National Guard troops were sent to the GulfCoast to help with hurricane relief in 2005.
