BATON ROUGE, La. — Eleven years ago, Sam Barbera hooked up his boat and headed to New Orleans to ferry people from Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters. Four weeks ago, he found himself in another boat for rescues — this time at home in Baton Rouge, when a massive rainstorm ravaged the area.

It was “night and day,” he said. “Katrina was kind of baptism by fire. It was just people showing up, everybody doing their own thing.”

But during the catastrophic flooding in mid-August, police directed volunteer boats and their owners — nicknamed the “Cajun Navy” — to neighborhoods where water was rising, and social media postings offered guidance on where victims needed help.

“You didn’t have that in Katrina. Katrina was kind of like you just put your boat in. Katrina was mayhem,” Barbera said.

In 2005, the monster storm exposed huge gaps in disaster response plans on local, state and federal levels. More than 1,500 people were killed in Louisiana alone. After the levees failed and inundated New Orleans and surrounding communities, thousands were plucked from rooftops and attics. Response was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants effort, with no coordinated strategy for rescues — or what to do with the people saved. First responders were overwhelmed, and many were left to fend for themselves.

Lessons learned from Katrina formed the backbone of state and federal reaction as historic flooding ravaged 20 parishes last month. The response in the immediate aftermath was widely praised by officials and storm victims, Republican and Democrat alike.

But the slog of the longer-term recovery is starting to show that cracks remain in the disaster safety net — and that wariness lingers about federal help after the troubled response to Katrina.

Criticisms are emerging about the pace of housing aid, the size of grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the question marks that surround rebuilding and recovery.

“I don’t feel like y’all are pushing the issue quick enough or fast enough to be able to get people back in their homes,” state Rep. Clay Schexnayder, a Republican who represents hard-hit areas, told FEMA at a recent hearing on flood response.

Stephan Perkins, 46, was waiting for a FEMA inspector to show up 10 days after he registered with the agency. Perkins had a flood insurance policy that covered the structural damage to his home but not its contents. A neighbor with the same type of flood coverage told Perkins that FEMA offered him less than $200.

“I’m just hearing the horror stories,” said Perkins, a father of two.