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Washington – The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s top official was told more than a year before Hurricane Katrina that the agency’s emergency response teams were unprepared for a major disaster and were operating under outdated plans, documents show.

Additionally, e-mails obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press indicate that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff tried to call Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco the afternoon before Katrina hit. The e-mails indicate she could not be immediately reached and may have been napping.

A spokeswoman for the governor said Wednesday that Blanco was getting personal items at her residence when Chertoff called.

“There was no time for napping,” Denise Bottcher said.

An 11-page memo to Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, from June 2004 described teams of national response managers that were not prepared and were getting “zero funding for training, exercise or team equipment.”

Those responders “provide the only practical, expeditious option for the (FEMA) director to field a cohesive team of his best people to handle the next big one,” wrote William Carwile, one of FEMA’s federal coordinating officers.

As for the plans that response teams use during an emergency, Carwile wrote: “Revision should be a priority since not one word of response doctrine … has been published in over two years.”

Carwile told Senate aides in a meeting this week that his memo largely was ignored at FEMA’s headquarters, as were four budget requests over an 18-month period for money for the teams. He said each team needed about $1.2 million for training and equipment, according to an aide who attended the meeting.

Brown resigned from FEMA on Sept. 12, under fire in the wake of the government’s sluggish reaction to Katrina and questions about his own professional experience in responding to disasters.

FEMA’s two national response teams are sent from Washington only during catastrophic events. The teams include FEMA’s most experienced emergency managers, who coordinate response and recovery operations with state officials, and assign tasks to other federal agencies.

FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said one team was sent to Louisiana on Aug. 27, two days before the hurricane hit.

The teams were redesigned in May to make them “more responsive and more nimble,” Andrews said. She said the agency budgeted $6.2 million last year to boost similar response operations.

Asked if any of the changes reflected Carwile’s concerns, Andrews said: “It certainly addressed making them more efficient and effective.”

Carwile, who retired from the agency in October, wrote the memo on behalf of the agency’s other regional coordinating officers.

He planned to testify today at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on FEMA’s response operations.