The Superdome in New Orleans after a power surge on Feb. 3, 2013. (Dilip Vishwanat/Getty)
Like plenty of people watching the power outage in the New Orleans Superdome during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Michael Brown cracked a Katrina joke on Twitter.
Unlike plenty of people, however, Brown was former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President George W. Bush, in charge of managing the federal response to the 2005 hurricane that killed more than 1,800 people and left thousands of residents homeless.
Someone just told me there was fighting going on in the NOLA Superdome. #shocked
— Michael D Brown (@MichaelBrownUSA) February 4, 2013
"Someone just told me there was fighting going on in the NOLA Superdome," Brown tweeted, adding the hashtag "#shocked."
Brown resigned as director of FEMA in the wake of what many critics said was a slow and incompetent response to Katrina’s aftermath—and just a week after Bush, on his first post-storm visit to the region, said, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
His Superdome tweet also drew criticism, but Brown, now a talk radio host, did not back down.
"Come see the water line marks on the street signs by my church and see how funny Katrina/Dome tweets are," Twitter user Duris Holmes wrote.
"I saw them," Brown replied. "Blanco Nagin refused to look"—a reference to former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
"Screen shots on iPad," he later tweeted. "Great for capturing vitriol that's later deleted from Twitter feed."
Brown added: "Blocking is quite useful, too."
It's not the first time since his FEMA resignation that Brown's been at the center of a controversy. Last fall, Brown criticized President Barack Obama for responding to Hurricane Sandy too early.