President Bush visited New Orleans today on the first anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and said that he took full responsibility for the failures of federal agencies to cope with the catastrophe.

In an emotional speech in a New Orleans high school gymnasium, Mr Bush admitted government failures "at all levels" but said that billions of dollars had been assigned for a recovery effort which he likened to rediscovering the soul of New Orleans.

He said that the floods which devastated the city were of a "biblical scale" and acknowledged that they caused the greatest dislocation in the US since the "dustbowl" famine of the 1930s.

The President praised doctors, nurses and other local people who stayed behind to help those trapped and in distress following the disaster which left thousands homeless and around 1,700 dead.

Mr Bush said: "The government, at all levels, fell short of its responsibilities. I take full responsibility for the federal government response."

The president also met Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Mayor, in a city neighbourhood where the homes still bear the marks of flooding.

The anniversary of Katrina's arrival was marked across the Gulf Coast today where, at the crack of dawn, hundreds of people bowed their heads in silence to mark the moment a year ago when the storm swept the tiny community of Buras, Louisiana, 65 miles from New Orleans, into the Gulf of Mexico.

A few hours later, bells tolled to mark the moment at 9.38am when New Orleans’ flood levees buckled, unleashing a torrent of water that ripped homes off their foundations and sent tens of thousands of residents into an uncertain exile.

As the bells rung, those who survived the storm gathered outside city hall. "I felt like I needed to be here. It’s like a funeral," said 33-year-old Gayla Dunn, 33. But she added, "Life goes on after today."

In pockmarked neighborhoods choked with weeds, in church pews and in gutted community centers, residents held public and private vigils. At each of the city’s broken levees, they lay wreaths of flowers, sending them bobbing onto the calm, black water, marking the geography of the crescendoing flood.

Hundreds danced, sang and openly wept as they gathered in front of the new concrete levee wall that replaced one that split open last year on the Industrial Canal.

The wall of water demolished the hardscrabble Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, and the once-bustling landscape near the levee now resembles a badly littered pasture with hip-high grass.

Mr Bush visited some of the worst-hit parts of New Orleans and attended a prayer service this morning at a church in Jackson Square, in the heart of the French Quarter.

His wife Laura also gave a speech during the visit in which she stressed the importance of rebuilding schools to encourage people to return to the city. She said that support and prayers from her family, and families across America, would be with the people still affected by the disaster until the recovery was complete.

But Michael Brown, who lost his job as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) because of the fury over the agency's failures, said today that his biggest regret a year later was that he had not been candid enough about the lack of a coherent federal response plan.

"There was no plan. ... Three years ago, we should have done catastrophic planning," Mr Brown said, claiming that the Bush Administration and his own boss, Michael Chertoff, "would not give me the money to do that kind of planning".

When the levees broke and thousands were forced to flee rising floodwaters, Mr Brown said that he had sought unsuccessfully to get the 82nd Airborne Division into the city quickly.

Mr Brown said that he had been made the scapegoat for the Government's slow response "because I'm the low man on the totem pole" but both Mr Bush and Mr Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, should have shared in the blame.

The anniversary came as a new tropical storm headed ominously towards the Gulf Coast.

Forecasters say that Ernesto could become the first hurricane to hit the US this year, with the chance it will strike Florida exactly 12 months after Katrina made landfall. Ernesto became a hurricane briefly at the weekend before being downgraded - but experts fear it could grow in strength again in the warm waters off Cuba.

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