Yes it was a man-made catastrophe.

Details continue to emerge showing how inadequate the levees actually were.

Seed cautioned that it's too early to tell whether the reports will pan out, or whether they will ultimately be linked to the breaches in the 17th Street and London Avenue canal floodwalls that allowed water to pour into much of the city after Katrina. "We don't want to alarm people because some of those stories probably won't hold up," he said.

After the hearing Seed said the engineers are "hearing from people who were involved and now feel very badly and want to try and make it right, because now they understand that it was dangerous. We're hearing from widows of people like that. We're hearing it from a variety of sources right now, and what makes us nervous is we're hearing some stories repeated from different sources."

UPDATE:Here's a similar story from the New York Times.