Where did response to Hurricane Ike fall on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being Hurricane Katrina bad? The answer depends on who you ask, but it seemed like the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were ready and waiting. Hurricane Katrina did for natural-disaster preparedness what 9/11 did for terrorism preparedness.

Roads still flooded, power lines still fell, and emergency responders still found plenty of surprises, but that's why they are called disasters. Hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, floods and earthquakes are nature's way of reminding us who's in control. You win some and you lose some, but you might minimize the losses if you take some precautions.

David Paulison has been taking those precautions since he became FEMA director three years ago. He has worked hard to rebuild the agency, particularly with lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Under his watch, there have been improvements in technology and logistics, resources, and multi-level communications.

FEMA also has pushed back on the public and public service agencies to take precautions and prepare themselves for disasters. FEMA's Web site lists 17 possible disasters and details before-, during- and after-action steps for each.

Louisiana State Fire Marshal H. “Butch” Browning was able to anticipate fire department needs for this hurricane season. The state's response to Ike showed much improvement over response to Katrina, according to Browning, with a new game plan and an emergency operations center to support the local departments.

After Katrina, Louisiana developed a program that uses the state's 200 fire marshal deputies for preplanning, instead of just response. The marshals are assembled into response teams to assess fire department needs, establish lines of communication, remind fire chiefs of the process to request state assets and reinforce state-level support.

“This effort built confidence that if fire chiefs needed state assistance, they knew somebody was carrying the responsibility for the fire service to get what they needed,” Browning said.

Hurricane Ike already has produced some valuable lessons about caring for and feeding response teams during a major disaster. Numerous out-of-state agencies responded to Texas and Louisiana, bringing enough self-sustaining provisions for 72 hours. As the hurricane dragged on, responders ran out of food and water and they wondered where their meals would come from.

Texas state officials told newspapers that such provisions were a local problem, locals looked to FEMA for answers, and FEMA — to its surprise — found itself charged with delivering supplies for emergency responders.

Staging areas for public safety officers and the National Guard in Texas lacked food or water. Delivering aid to five million people without power is a daunting task for any agency, made more so by also having to provide for rescue workers. Whose responsibility was it?

The Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System arrived in southwestern Louisiana before Ike made landfall. They, too, responded with enough provisions for 72 hours, after which time MABAS President Jay Reardon said, food, water and shelter should be established locally.

He agreed with frustrations over some of the logistics, but said they were due to waiting for a damage assessment as the hurricane winds subsided. “Overall, it worked pretty darn well,” he said. “Next time we'll do it a little differently.” Each disaster provides knowledge for the teams to build on.

We learn lessons and improve as much from the things that go wrong as from the things that go right. But a lesson's true value is taking the responsibility to learn. And sometimes, the hardest lesson to learn is to push back.