Hurricane Katrina: A Tale of Environmental and Political Disaster, Research Paper Example

The disaster that unfolded as Hurricane Katrina landed on the Louisiana shore and wreaked havoc on the Gulf states and especially the town of New Orleans, is said to be the United States worst natural disaster in history. Its toll, both human and environmental, was felt in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle (Knabb et al, 2005). The disaster did not stop when the hurricane passes and the skies cleared, but continued as government agencies failed miserably in their rescue and rescue procedures. Hurricane Katrina is a story of the Perfect Storm, one that was able to grow to an enormous size and with incredible strength before hitting the U.S. coast due to subtle interactions in the upper atmosphere and to interplays with two other tropical depressions that were in the gulf at the time. When Katrina made landfall near Pass Christian, Mississippi on August 29^th, 2005,  it did so as a Class C Hurricane, with winds reaching 125 knots. The resulting tidal surge reached an estimated 20 feet and swept over the Mississippi Gulf Coast, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Of all the areas effected, New Orleans was the worst. “The water also breached a series of protective levees in New Orleans on the east and north sides of the city, flooding more than 70 percent of the area (Morris, 2008).” The thought that one day a hurricane would hit the city and breech the levees was not to New Orleans officials, and steps had been taken to ensure that in the event of such an emergency, emergency plans of action would be executed, leading to a minimal loss of life and property. Sadly, plans were not executed and the best case scenario, with agencies working together to prevent loss of life was not the scenario that played out. Instead, the Hurricane Katrina disaster is a tale of government fumbling and very bad planning and execution, which led the Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation and Response to Hurricane Katrina to call their report to the U.S. House of Representatives “A Failure of Initiative.” Hurricane Katrina was a national disaster that resulted in an enormous loss of life, property and culture and from which a number of important lessons can be learned and applied, hopefully leading to the creation of a emergency disaster response system that be better equipped to handle such events in the future.

While there were many factors and steps that contributed to the Katrina disaster, it seems appropriate to start with the beginning, with the levees themselves. Official investigations later revealed that the levees were simply not built to sustain the most severe hurricanes. The responsibilities of the maintenance and operations of the levee’s were diffuse and a lack of a system warning of breaches delayed repairs when needed. In the official Katrina report, A Lack of Initiative, the authors note in the report that the reason the levees failed is still unclear, however, and is a question under investigation.  Knowing the potential for disaster existed if and when the hurricane made landfall and the levees failed, official rescue and relief plans already in place, and as Hurricane Katrina approached, those plans were put into action. The governors of Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi, expecting the worse, asked for a disaster declaration from the White House, which was quickly granted. “Almost immediately, FEMA contractors began moving supplies of water, ice, generators and other critical supplies into the region (Morris, 2008).” Mobilization by the Coast Guard also began as they moved small boats, shift helicopters and airplanes into strategic positions just outside the predicted path of the storm. However, when the storm actually hit, and the levees failed, things began to fall apart. “Massive interoperability had the biggest effect on communication, limiting command and control, situational awareness, and federal, state and local officials ability to address unsubstantiated media reports (Davis et al, 2006).” In the devastating aftermath of the storm, a lack of communication left rescue workers, who were ready to move, simply waiting for orders.

In their report, A Failure of Initiative, the authors conclude that “Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare – individual, corporate, philanthropic, and governmental – we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina (Davis et al, 2006).” The failure was due primarily to a lack of effective communication between the various government agencies as well as a lack of action. The only agency that took matters into it own hands and conducted search and rescue operations without succumbing to bureaucracy was the U.S. Coast Guard. The success of the Coast Guard in executing an efficient and effective search and rescue was in part due to that agencies special rescue training and partly due to the fact that they are trained to work and cooperate with other agencies. Other military forces, which were needed desperately in the days following Katrina, but were not adequately deployed. This is for two reasons. One is that most of Louisiana’s National Guard troops were deployed in Iraq. This by itself was not necessarily an issue, since Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco had activated pre-existing agreements with other states to borrow National Guard troops prior to landfall. These troops were quickly moved to the area, but the White House wanted to federalize the troops, while Gov. Blanco wanted to keep them under state control. The White House also disputed the timing of the governor’s request to release active-duty military troops into the area, although later evidence showed that the request had come much earlier than initial White House claims (Morris, 2008).

One of the reasons for the immense amount of human suffering in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane was due to the fact that there were still so many people in New Orleans when the hurricane hit. The hurricane hit over a weekend at the end of the month. Individuals without access to funds for gas and lodging could not afford to leave town, and many others simply did not want to. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did not help matters in stalling the orders for a mandatory evacuation of the city. Though he was given adequate warning a full 56 hours before landfall, he only issued the evacuation 19 hours before landfall (Davis et al, 2006). The evacuation itself was executed haphazardly at best, with many residents being left in the city, both by choice and because of lack of transportation out of the city. Instead of trying harder to remove the population from the city, Mayor Nagin decided to shelter the remaining population in the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center. However, as the flooding continued and services were cut off, the buildings became unable to handle the needs of the people inside them. Yet, with floodwater’s surrounding the building for days, no one could leave. All they could do was wait for help that took far too long in coming.

Once the Disaster Declaration had been issued, before the storm hit, FEMA has been mobilizing supplies, so why weren’t those supplies delivered quickly and efficiently to New Orleans in the wake of the storm? Part of the blame is due to the fact that FEMA was simply a directive agency whose task was to direct supplies and aid to those in need after the storm. Another part of the blame is that after 2001, FEMA became a part of the Department of Homeland Security, and its focus turned away from natural disaster and was instead directed at terrorism response (Morris, 2008).  Other factors were more practical in nature. Right after the levees broke, the situation on the ground was too dangerous to send in disaster relief teams. FEMA director Michael Brown told NewsHour on September 1, 2005 that What we cannot do, and what we did not do immediately after the storm passed and as the levees were breaking, was to be able to bring in rescue workers and urban search-and-rescue teams and the medical teams because they themselves would have then become disaster victims. So we had to come in very carefully and very methodically. And it frustrated me, too because I would rather just have charged in there and done everything we could have (Shoup, 2005).

Brown, however, was removed from his duties of FEMA director due to gross failure of the department under his command. He was replaced with Thad Allen, the Coast Guard’s then chief of staff, who immediately began efforts of collaboration and cooperation that led to a more effective and organized response to the rescue efforts (Morris, 2008).

While Brown has been given a good share of the blame for FEMA’s failure during Katrina, in their follow up report to Failure of Initiative, Representatives Melancon and Jefferson (2006) discuss the role the White House played in the the lack of response to the disaster. The Select Committee was given the duty of obtaining key documents and testimony from the White House pertaining to the fact that they had the information to mobilize rescue a rescue effort prior to when they said they did.

Michael Brown communicated up to 30 times with President Bush, White House Chief of Staff   Andrew Card and his deputy Joe Hagin in the days before, during and after the storm. The Committee received evidence that Mr. Brown warned the White House that he could not establish command and control; that he informed the White House that the levees failed on the day Katrina struck; and that he asked the White House for urgent help in managing the federal response (Melancon and Jefferson, 2006).

This incredible display of lack of cooperation and communication between the federal government and local, state and federal agents and organizations was at the core of the Katrina response disaster. The Bush Administration’s complete lack of action on behalf of the American citizens trapped, suffering and dying in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane has prompted many to suggest that racism was at the core of the rescue fiasco instead of simple confusion and bureaucracy that is the official story. In  A Failure of Initiative, the authors sate that “Critical elements of the National Response Plan were executed late, ineffectively, or not at all (Davis et al, 2006).” While the federal government had prior warning and adequate time to prepare for the event, the official procedures were either delayed in being invoked or completely ignored. Federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, were apparently unfamiliar with the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System, leaving them confused and guessing at what their various roles should be.

Hurricane Katrina was a tragic lesson for the United States. Disaster was able to strike home due to a lack of cooperation, planning, and the fact that emergency military personnel were thousands of miles away, deployed in foreign countries.  The disaster revealed that behind the big talk, the fancy acronyms and more than sufficient federal funding, emergency agencies are lacking decisive action that leads to real rescue results. In the aftermath, fingers can be pointed and blame assigned, but it is the American people who paid the taxes that funded FEMA and DHS that ultimately paid the price of inefficiency. Instead of calling Hurricane Katrina the perfect storm, it is better called the Perfect Bureaucratic Disaster, one that will hopefully never be re-lived.

References

Davis, T., Rogers, H., Shays, C. Bonilla, H., Buyer, S., Myrick, S., Thornberry, M., Granger, K.,   Pickering, C.W., Shuster, B., and Miller, J. (February, 2006) A Failure of Initiative: Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina Homeland Security Digital Library Online. Web. Retrieved from https://www.hsdl.org/?view&doc=58738&coll=limited

Knabb, R.D., Rhome, J.R., and Brown, D.P. (December, 2005) Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Online Web. Retrieved from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL122005_Katrina.pdf

Melancon, C. and Jefferson, W.J. (February, 2006) United States House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina Homeland Security Digital Library Online. Web. Retrieved from https://www.hsdl.org/?view&doc=61507&coll=limited

Morris, J.C. (2008) From Disaster to Lessons Learned: What Went Wrong in the Response to Hurricane Katrina? Old Domain University Online. Web. Retrieved from http://www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/DisasterLessons.html

Shoup, Anna (September, 2005) FEMA Faces Intense Scrutiny PBS Newshour Online Web. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec05/katrina/fema_background.html