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COLUMBIA -- One of the nation's top experts in emergency preparedness who teaches at the University of South Carolina said the government's reaction to Hurricane Katrina shows the nation's disaster response system is broken.

But South Carolina's system, she said, is in far better condition and could handle a similar storm.

"I think we're in very good shape," said Susan Cutter, who directs USC's Hazards Research Lab and studies the nation's disasters and how emergency officials respond to them.

Local, state and federal officials have been assailed during the past week for what has been called slow responses to the unfolding tragedy of Katrina, especially in New Orleans, where those left behind waited for days to be rescued or delivered food and water.

Even the evacuation effort from the Gulf Coast area has come under fire in South Carolina. Federal officials have told state officials flights were coming, only to later cancel the flights. In one case, a flight was sent by mistake to Charleston, W.Va., instead of Charleston, S.C.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was removed from his job overseeing Katrina aid following a week of criticism and recent questions about his resume.

"Every day confirms the system is broke," Cutter said, "that emergency management response to this disaster did not function like it should."

Had the system worked properly, she said, resources such as food, water and public safety personnel would have been pre-positioned to get into the city soon after the storm left.

"We didn't really see that in this case," she said. "It took a while for the federal response to get into these damaged areas. And that's one indicator it wasn't working the way it should. We should have seen some immediate response."

Cutter said the problem is "partly systemic."

"And partly related to the magnitude and the severity of the event, itself," she said of the storm. "But I don't want to over-emphasize the magnitude issue. It's really a constellation of both of those that has precipitated the situation."

She said the government's response to storm damage from Katrina and last year's storm damage in Florida was dramatically different. Help arrived in Florida, almost immediately, she said.

"Why was the response in Florida quite good and in different states it fell apart?" she asked.

Cutter said the government should convene an independent panel to look at what happened.

"So that we can improve the system rather than getting involved in the blame game with politicians on both sides blaming each other and then blaming state and local government," she said. "Every day confirms that this is a national tragedy, and we need to address it at that level."

Cutter said she believes South Carolina would fare better if it was hit with a similar storm.

"This state has had experience with major events," she said, referring in part to Hurricane Hugo's damage done in 1989. "And this state has practiced a large-scale evacuation in recent memory, with Hurricane Floyd."

And while there were problems with that evacuation, she said, "The hurricane plan changed as a consequence. So we learned the lessons."