Write Up
The scenario involved the Hurricane Katrina, which was a big catastrophe that occurred in the United States. It caused floods in the city of New Orleans and other towns such as Florida, Alabama and Mississippi it caused people to be stranded. The author wanted to inquire why the government’s response was taking long to provide help to the victims. The author became curious since other personnel such as the media could access the area whereas help was not forthcoming from the relevant authorities. This result to the research question was the government’s response motivated by racism?
The Body
The relevant authorities had a wide range of information concerning the occurrence of the hurricane. The National Hurricane Center had warned about Hurricane Katrina and that it would have a huge magnitude since it was a category 3 storm. The authorities with such information would have acted swiftly in order to try and curb the disaster but which they didn’t. The research question comes up since New Orleans is a city whose main inhabitants are the blacks and further questions can be asked on whether if it was a whitely dominated area would the response have been the same as it was? The evidence to this is the way the mayor acted he had been informed about the hurricane building up he, however, did not act hastily as he only started issuing a voluntary evacuation late in the evening. The evacuation, on the other hand, ought to be authoritative, and this was not the case since it was voluntary.
There was even a case where help was forthcoming only for it to be shunned by the authorities. This was when Amtrak had pledged to offer, one of its trains to help with the evacuation process but the authorities did not adhere to the offer and the train had to leave without passengers. This was a very delicate situation since any help forthcoming would have been greatly appreciated, but the opposite happened, therefore, begging the question on whether there was any mischief in the whole situation.
The National Hurricane Center director had even taken precautionary measures in calling both the mayor and the governor to inform them of the disastrous hurricane. The both were reluctant on dramas tic response, and this is evident since a mandatory evacuation order was not taken immediately but had to wait for the following day Sunday. This is a sign of hesitation by both the mayor and the governor since they were expected to be on the forefront in trying to find solutions for the mayhem.
Another situation showing this reluctance was even after the President declared a state of emergency some of the authorized authorities such as Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) mandated to manage the disaster and provide relief neither of then jumped into action. The president was also abet ignorant of the situation since he remarked that since he didn’t read newspapers he came to learn about the situation through some of his authorities, and this was after some days had passed since it started. He seemed to be somehow not to be bothered by the undertaking since during that period he would undertake things that were not of national importance as compared to what was happening as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency mandated to handle disasters used delay tactics to frustrate the victims since they took 48hours to swing into action and this was a lot of time given the magnitude of the disaster that had occurred. This leads to the question why did they take that long and yet they had the necessary equipments to handle it. Was it because of the nature of the people living there?
Those people who had managed to leave their flooded homes were in Superdome and the situation there was horrible since they were crowded, experienced poor sanitary conditions and no food. The bodies of the deceased were piling up. The situation was very chaotic and truly these were some inhuman acts that befell the victims. This was very embarrassing since it was happening in American soil and given the vast resources it has then the situation should have been handled better and the extreme damage that was witnessed would have been prevented.
It was also very pathetic and astonishing since FEMA came up with some stringent measures to those people who were willing to help. An example to this is when Dr Permutter offered to help those in need only to be shunned away on the basis that he did not have the correct paper work. Rosie O’ Donnell had also donated three trailers to help the victims only for them to be locked up. These responses were very poor and there were some underlying reasons why they acted that way.
Conclusion
The above portrayed an unbiased way of handling the situation. Such a disaster required rapid responses in order to prevent further loss of life and misery for the victims. A tarnishing image was made where the blacks were accused of looting despite the situation since they were acting as a result of despair and this caused a lot of outrage in the Black community. This shows racism since they were being discriminated against in terms of the help that was forthcoming and the inhuman words that they were being called. To support this in the Middle East the media source Al Jazeera stated that it sympathized with the Blacks and believed that if the victims of Katrina were rich and white then they would have been rescued.
