Abstract
The Hurricane Katrina is considered the most devastating storm in the United States due to its magnitude of destruction and the casualties involved. Though the weather forecasters had predicted about the storm, the American government had not put any measures to deal with the catastrophe. As a result, the Gulf Coast States that was hit hardest by Katrina lost properties worth billions as well as thousands of lives. The parties involved in the rescue process included the Army Corps, Coast Guards, as well as FEMA. The Katrina hurricane recorded the government inefficiency in two levels. The first one is poor crisis management. The United States government and the New Orleans government failed to recognize the cyclone as an incidence of natural interest and responded to it like any other natural disaster. The other level is the slow response of the federal authorities. The United States was unsure of whether to trust the findings of the weather experts thus the president delayed in declaring his mandatory evacuation command of all the residents of the suspected areas. However, these failures led helped the government and the citizens to learn various lessons as discussed in the paper.
Introduction to Hurricane Katrina and Its Impacts
Although human beings have made acute technological progress in the globe, they remain virtually powerless in control of vagaries of nature. Therefore, natural disasters continue ravaging the earth. Examples of such disasters are earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. A Hurricane is a natural disaster characterized by massive swirling storms with heavy winds. Hurricanes affect millions of people every year negatively through massive destruction of property and loss of lives. On August 23 2005, Hurricane Katrina that affected areas such as South Florida, Bahamas, New Orleans, Louisiana, as well as Cuba hit the United States. The Hurricane Katrina tragedy struck the Golf Coast and changed the lives of many citizens especially those who lived in the affected areas (Wu, Lindell& Prater, 2012). The calamity is recorded to have been the most deadly and economically costly cyclone ever in the history of the United States.
Though the Katrina affected a significant portion of the Gulf Coast such as Bahamas, Louisiana, Cuba, and South Florida, the city of Orleans was hit hardest due to its vulnerability of being located below the sea level. The city was affected by category three of the hurricane, which was composed of a tidal surge and intense gusts. It is documented that the storm surge led to more than 48 breaches in drainage and navigational canal levees. Many weather forecasters and scientists had warned about the occurrence of a hurricane in the city due to its geographical position and its aging water levee system. However, the government did not implement appropriate preparedness measures to protect the people and the infrastructure of the city.
The Hurricane had various impacts such as loss of lives and massive destruction of properties worth millions. Besides, despite the demolition of infrastructure and the environment, the American citizens suffered emotional stress and issues prior and after the disaster. This situation mostly affected the working class who lost their jobs due to business loss and destruction. Besides, existing documents show that 700,000 people were displaced, and more than 273,000 were evacuated because of the storms and floods thus causing emotional distress among the people. Further, learning activities were distracted especially in the city of New Orleans that hosts major universities such as Xavier, Dillard, Southern, Lyoyla, and the University of New Orleans. Additionally, the Hurricane led to anger towards local and federal government due to its lack of preparedness. The people argued that though the government had put some canals in the affected cities, they were not robust enough to handle disasters such as Hurricane.
Government-Private Response
Although the government lacked appropriate preparedness measure before the storm even after the constant warnings from the weather forecasters, it involved various rescue squads such as the Coast Guard and the Army Corps to respond to the disaster. The response to the catastrophe started immediately after the Katrina hit other cities in the U.S. For instance, the Army Corps built seawalls and levees in an attempt to prevent flooding in New Orleans city. However, built dams of Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain were not strong to withstand the floods. The reason is that they were built on porous and erodible soils that made them break during the storm. After these events, the New Orleans mayor ordered people to evacuate the region and even declared Superdome a shelter for those individuals that did not have a place to stay. However, only 80% of the people in the area evacuated as others decided to wait out the storm (Mileski & Honeycutt, 2013).
After the storm hit the city, the government ordered the Coast Guards to rescue the people that were stranded by the floods. Other volunteers such as the International Committee of the Red Cross also helped these individuals and even offered them with food and shelter. Though these groups did their best, it was difficult for them to rescue all the people in the city. Following these events, the government sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help in the rescue process. However, FEMA did not have a plan for action to help the victims, and this led to massive loss of lives. Moreover, the United States government deployed an untested DHS that was unsure of how to organize its authority and the resources that it had in the rescue process. Therefore, the DHS did not recognize the hurricane as an incidence of natural interest thus responding to it as any other natural disaster thus increasing the damages experienced.
Recovery Efforts
The groups involved in the rescue plan worked hard to evacuate the victims and take them to places they could get food, water, and shelter. These groups did not have a plan for the rescue. This scenario, therefore, proved that the government lacked appropriate preparedness measure before the storm even after the constant warnings from the weather forecasters. For example, an article in the Houston Chronicles and the Times-Picayune published in 2001 stated that there was a possibility of a category five hurricane hitting the city of New Orleans (Corey & Deitch, 2011). However, the government did not adopt any measures to prepare for the catastrophe that occurred later in the year 2005. Instead, it ignored the warnings, and the funds that were supposed to prepare for such disasters were used for other national issues. That, therefore, made the evacuation procedure tough since there were no enough human resources and materials to be used during the process.
Moreover, these groups encountered the problem of resistance from the people especially those that lived in New Orleans city. The reason is that the people did not believe the intensity of the hurricane as predicted thus refused to leave the city after the mayor of the city ordered them to do so. Besides, the people that were involved in the rescue process did not have a plan for evacuating the people and savaging the property. The saved people suffered so much because due to lack of adequate water, food, security or sanitary conditions. As a result, many people died due to starvation and waterborne diseases. There was also anger from people towards the government that delayed the rescue process. Most citizens in the United States blamed the government for not taking the necessary measures to prevent such a catastrophe despite the various warnings from the weather forecasters. Therefore, they did not have faith in those groups that were sent by the government to carry out the rescue procedure thus preferred using the volunteers who had their boats.
Lessons Learned
Moreover, the report acknowledged the need to integrated military use to deal with catastrophes. During the Hurricane Katrina, the Active Duty and the National Guard greatly helped in rescuing the affected people. However, the groups were not willing to work together until the time the situation was declared a national disaster. Besides, the Coast Guard was the only team from the federal department that was helping in the evacuation process. Therefore, there is need for the federal and the defense department to work together during national catastrophes.
Consequently, we also learn the need for the government to develop modern, transparent, and flexible logistics systems. The logistics systems should be established from the identified contacts for stocking and offering goods and services needed during a disaster. This will help the federal government to develop a system for large-scale logistical action that supplement the disaster response agencies with resources leveraged from both the public and the private sector. Further, the federal government must ensure that these logistic systems help the Department of Transportation to conduct massive evacuation in cases of emergencies.
Additionally, the report indicated the need for the homeland security and the federal government to partner in revising the plans laid by the United States government to deal with disasters and come up with an operation structure. The reason is that the government learnt that the laid plans were not effective since they did not help during the Hurricane Katrina. Therefore, there is need to organize, train, and equip all the executive branch authorities to enable them perform their response duties during such catastrophes. Besides, the government ought to finance these processes by declaring the national preparedness for disasters as their major goal.
Analysis of the Katrina
After a review and analysis of the response to Hurricane Katrina, the government learned several specific lessons. Some of the experiences had an effect on all aspects of the Federal response while the rest had an effect on the particular and discrete operational capability. One area of concern regarded national preparedness. The current homeland security system is not adequately provided with the capacity to counter challenges posed by the current threats of catastrophe. Much as there exists a response system that can handle the demands of a hurricane season and any other occurrence of a disaster, it has several shortcomings to help in countering catastrophic situations (Johnson, 2011). The flaws that arose included knowledge of preparedness plans, efficient coordination, and command and control structures.
The other issue of concern was the integrated use of military capabilities. The department of defense can play a significant role in responding to catastrophic situations. During the response, the agency portrayed that it was the only one with real operational capabilities. However, the Federal response to the catastrophe showers several challenges while using the military capabilities in domestic occurrences. Some limitations caused the very active duty military to depend on requests for aid hence slowing the application of resources by the department of defense. In addition, the National Guard and military operations had no coordination and served two bosses; the Governor and the President.
The other area of concern regarded the issue of communication. The hurricane damaged a significant portion of communication infrastructure in the coastal zone. Many people lost telephone services as well as broadcast communications. The challenges across the region were more of an issue of basic operability. The destruction of the infrastructure led to emergency responders and citizens without an efficient network for coordination.
Recommendations
In the recent time, there has been the need for better preparedness for catastrophes such as the Hurricane Katrina. There was the need to come up with a National preparedness system and to foster a new and vigorous culture of readiness. As far as a national preparedness system is concerned, there was a need to address the shortfalls in the Federal response to the catastrophe. The nation came up with guidelines and individual plans across several agencies and government levels. In addition to that, there was the need to come up with a regional structure. In this case, there was a call on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create and put into action the Homeland Security Regions, which are fully trained, staffed and have the full equipment to coordinate and manage all kinds of preparedness activities and emergencies requiring a significant amount of response. The other method involved strengthening the public health response. In this case, there was the need to urge the Department of Health and Human Services to have a strong public health and medical command for a catastrophic response. There was the need to come up with robust response strategies, which include deploying and tracking public health care and health assets.
Transforming the National Guard was necessary so that they could make modifications in their organizations and training for preparedness and deployment to support homeland security missions. At the same time, there was the need to include the Guard into preparation and planning process. In creating a culture of preparedness, it was suggested that the citizens and the community should be made a top priority and to achieve this, several public figures were allowed to serve as representatives to promote community and citizen preparedness. Overall, it is a person's responsibility to possess a plan and step up during such disasters.
References
Corey, C. M., &Deitch, E. A. (2011). Factors affecting business recovery immediately after Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Contingencies and crisis management, 19(3), 169-181.
Johnson, C. (Ed.). (2011). The neoliberal deluge: Hurricane Katrina, late capitalism, and the remaking of New Orleans. University of Minnesota Press.
Mileski, J. P., & Honeycutt, J. (2013). Flexibility in maritime assets and pooling strategies: A viable response todisaster. Marine Policy, 40, 111-116.
Powell, T., Hanfling, D., &Gostin, L. O. (2012). Emergency preparedness and public health: the lessons of Hurricane Sandy. JAMA, 308(24), 2569-2570.
Wu, H. C., Lindell, M. K., & Prater, C. S. (2012). Logistics of hurricane evacuation in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 15(4), 445-461.
