Lisa Nunez salvages some possessions from her home after Hurricanes Katrina struck New Orleans

Washington, March 2: President George W .Bush was warned a day before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could swamp New Orleans, it emerged last night.

Leaked video footage and transcripts of top-level briefings in the six days before the storm showed federal officials telling Bush the storm could breach levees and overwhelm rescuers.

He did not ask a single question in the final briefing on August 29 last year, the day before Katrina made landfall. But he told officials in Louisiana: “We are fully prepared”.

The footage, obtained by the Associated Press, appears to contradict Bush’s announcement four days after the storm that he did not think “anyone anticipated the breach of the levees”. The disclosures suggest that, while they had anticipated the disaster, federal officials were too slow in appreciating they were underprepared.

They also suggested that Bush’s confidence on August 29 bore no relation to the dire warnings of his officials.

Michael Brown, the then head of Fema, the federal emergency relief agency, told Bush and the homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there were not enough teams to help evacuees.

“I’m concerned about... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,” Brown told his superiors before Katrina struck.

Officials from the homeland security department have said that the “fog of war” blinded them to the scale of the crisis. The new disclosures show officials appreciated that Katrina would wreak havoc.

Brown has borne most of the criticism but last night he said: “I don’t buy the fog of war defence. It was a fog of bureaucracy.” The inept initial handling of the disaster shattered Bush’s reputation as a strong and decisive leader.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said yesterday he was shocked by the video .

“It surprises me that if there was that kind of awareness, why was the response so slow?” said Nagin, whose city was devastated when the storm struck on August 29 and causing massive flooding.