Question

Your assignment is to develop and draft a one-page point paper on two aspects of what went wrong during Hurricane Katrina and provide recommendations on how to mitigate those issues to ensure that it never occurs again

Answer 1

Answer.

Hurricane Katrina which struck the Gulf Coast in 2005 has come to resonate with one of the most devastating phenomena that hit the United States in recent time. It was a natural disaster which caused major damage to life and habitat the state of Louisiana and has been a focus of most of disaster management work in th United States Under the former Bush government in 2005.

Other than the alleged destruction of the economy of the affaceted states, Katrina has also come to symbolise a failure of the state machinery in taking timely measures. the state and federal governments both come under sharp criticism from politicians, journalists and environmentalists for mismanagement and lack of preparation in response to the  flooding of New Orleans, Louisiana which was one of the worst affected areas. The New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin for instance was accused for ignoring the flood evacuation order until a day before the storm had intensified.  

In addition to this, a major shortcoming of the whole distaster relief efforts by the state machinery was the inadequate arrangements in the shelter as most of the residents were hurried into the makeshift shelter with no provisions for food, warm clothes, blankets, medical supplies, etc. causing the death of several citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence, days after the storm itself had passed.

A major shortcoming of the disaster relief efforts was the slow speed with which decisions were made under the process of federalising the affected territory of Louisiana over  Mississippi and other areas in the Gulf coast.   Within the United States, response and planning is a local government responsibility first. When local government exhausts its resources, it then requests specific additional resources from the county level, then from county to the state to the federal government if needed. In the case of Katrina, Many of the problems that arose developed from inadequate planning and the failure of back-up communications systems. Within the City of New Orleans, the government operated from a makeshift hasty arrangement in a hotel ballroom in order to manage the disaster rather than create a properly staffed Emergency Operations Center with federal assistance which led to failures in communicating their need for crucial resources to the state.

However, a lesson to be learned from Hurricane Katrina is to build a stronger homeland security force which would be especially trained to execute evacuation plans, carry rescue missions, supply food and medical resources in shelters, etc and would be actively present on the ground in the future.

A second most crucial recommendation is that state agencies should work at the grassroots level to build a whole culture of preparedness. During the Hurricane, it was the local community p, neighbourhoods, and churches that had stepped forward to provide emergency relief in the face of failure of the state machinery. It is thus important that timely flood drills, workshops etc be organised in schools, community meetings and the residents be actively involved in setting up local shelters equipped with facilities so that causality can be abetted.