EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. ? When floodwaters knocked out the water treatment plant in Mason City, Iowa, FEMA rolled into town and promptly set up an account with a Pepsi bottler to supply bottled water. Then FEMA officials moved into a vacant store and began handing out the stuff.

“We saw different FEMA people in and out,” City Administrator Brent Trout said. “We really started seeing FEMA people showing up to see what was going on in town and putting out the word on flood assistance.”

Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a punchline, many homeowners, politicians and community leaders in the flood-stricken Midwest say that so far, the agency is doing a heckuva job – and they mean it.

Up and down the Big Muddy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being commended for responding quickly and surely.

“The lessons we learned from Katrina we’ve taken very seriously,” said Glenn Cannon, FEMA assistant administrator for disaster operations. He added: “We’ve changed the way we do business. We don’t wait to react.”

On Monday, with a few days to go before the last stretch of the bloated Mississippi River reaches its crest, people toiled around the clock to reinforce levees already strained and saturated from the pressure of the rising water.

Officials in Lincoln County, Mo., asked for volunteers to help fill 50,000 sandbags to fortify the 2 1/2-mile-long Pin Oak levee, an earthen berm that was so waterlogged that it was like “walking on a waterbed,” said county emergency management spokes-man Andy Binder. Federal officials said they couldn’t be sure it would survive through the river’s crest at Winfield, Mo., later in the week.

After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, FEMA came into New Orleans late and unprepared, and soon became a symbol of government bungling.

Now, storms and flooding in the upper Midwest have left 24 people dead, driven tens of thousands from their homes and caused billions in damage.

After the rain started falling in early June, FEMA arrived with 13 million sandbags to pile onto the levees, 200 generators, and 30 trucks to haul off debris. Across the upper Midwest, the agency has delivered nearly 3.6 million liters of water and 192,000 ready-to-eat meals. About 650 inspectors are working in Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin alone.

In those states, FEMA has received about 45,000 registrations for assistance from disaster victims. The agency already has handed out $81 million in housing assistance funds, said Carlos Castillo, a FEMA official.