Hurricane Katrina Evacuation Case Study

Outcome: Evacuation proved to be challenging because local, state, and federal governments were confused about which level of government was responsible for the second round of evacuation. Local/state governments were under the impression that the federal government should spearhead the evacuation efforts; likewise, the federal government was under the impression that the local/state government should spearhead the evacuation. Ultimately, it is a shared effort among all levels of governments but this was not clarified before the response phase.

time of crisis by R. David Paulison, who unlike Brown, has had a career focused on disaster

Katrina was a crisis primarily because of its scale and the mixture of challenges that it posed, not least the failure of the levees in New Orleans. Because of the novelty of a crisis, predetermined emergency plans and response behavior that may function quite well in dealing with routine emergencies are frequently grossly inadequate or even counterproductive. That proved true in New Orleans, for example, in terms of evacuation planning, law enforcement, rescue activities, sheltering, and provisions for the elderly and infirm.

After much debate, France offers to sell the U.S. not only New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory for a price of only $15 million dollars! Stretching from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, what will our nation do with all of this extra land?

According to the National Hurricane Center (Knabb, Rhome, & Brown, 2005, p. 1), Hurricane Katrina was a major hurricane, a tropical storm reached Category 5 hurricanes in the Saffir-Simpson. The hurricane winds reached over 280 km / h, and caused major damage in the coastal region of the southern United States, especially around the metropolitan area of New Orleans, on August 29, 2005, where more than a million people were evacuated. The hurricane caused 1,833 deaths and is therefore considered one of the most destructive hurricanes have hit the United States. The event much paralyzed the oil extraction activity and US natural gas, since much of the US oil is extracted in the Gulf of Mexico. More than five million people were without power in the region of the Gulf Coast, having taken weeks for the power was partially restored because the neighborhoods most affected the basic service framework provided slowly to be regularized.

The primary response or nonexistence thereof, as a result of Hurricane Katrina, showed great levels of inability and inefficiency by government leaders. The failures experienced by the government is a lot of blame to go around before and after Hurricane Katrina hit in New Orleans, Louisiana taking a lot of lives and making hundreds of thousands more homeless. The federal government were not ready or unprepared for the disaster that took place. The Federal Emergency Management also known as FEMA took several day to launch operations in New Orleans, Louisiana, and as they tried to establish their operation for the disaster they did not have an effective plan in place for the situation they had of their hands. According to Chris McGreal, "Bush

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans as well as the surrounding areas. It had a stunning “death toll of 1300 people and damage over $100 billion ”( Davlasheridze 94 ). The communication were taken down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were battered, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” ( Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS ).

Hurricane Katrina was a big threat to the coastal areas of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and the governor declared a state of emergency in reaction towards potential destruction the hurricane may fall in New Orleans, a major city in Louisiana. To prepare for the threat of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), was sent to Louisiana to help aid the state. Later, a big disaster befalls in the state of Louisiana, and the governor declared a national evacuation. New Orleans, the heavily populated city, ordered its citizen to evacuate in the Superdome, with food, shelter, and rations being distributed. After the state evacuation was made, there was a shortage of food, water, and operable toilet facilities, thus creating

New Orleans is built on a dangerously dynamic environment where the Mississippi River is constantly changing causing major maintenance of water resource management systems. One of the focus of the management was providing dry land for housing. In the twentieth century, New Orleans development of an extensive water management infrastructure caused the spatial separation of European American and African American by allowing urban expansion via development of suburbs growing into segregated housing. The main elements of this separation are wealth and racism. The ending result is a differential risk of flooding between European American and African American hence the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina was a devastating disaster that has affected many people in New Orleans. The communication broke down hours after Katrina because of the unexpected fast winds and floods that broke down “3 million phone lines and 1,000 cellular towers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”( Joch ). Because of the millions of phone lines that were broken down, contacting the government for help was difficult hours after hurricane Katrina. Not only that, the people of New Orleans underestimated the power of Hurricane Katrina causing many to be “ stranded with no food or water” (Narrator, “The Storm”,PBS).

Bill King, expert on evacuation techniques, in his editorial “Houston’s Mayor Was Right to Not Evacuate” (Aug. 28, 2017) argues that Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner decision to not order mandatory evacuations during the hurricane proved to be the best choice. He develops his argument by first establishing the destructive power of hurricanes by referencing the “disastrous evacuation” during Hurricane Rita which resulted in daylong traffic jams and 130 deaths; second, by affirming his credibility: asserting his involvement on a governor’s commission board that studied the errors of current evacuation techniques; third, by including the fact that flooding from rainfall is highly unpredictable, which means the areas that will be flooded are unpredictable

2. Purpose. To provide specific recommendations/guidance on the adjustments to the OCS Program due to Hurricane Maria aftermath. The recommended changes of drills, activities or events for October, November, December and January are explained in the following section. This is to ensure a proper training-learning environment.

Leaders tend to hide information from citizens, state, and federal organization always state that it is for their own good or that they withhold information because they did not wish to create panic and wanted to lessen the impact it could have on the citizens. Thereby, even before hurricane Katrina, New Orleans governor was aware of the problem(s) with the levee. According to Irons (2005, p. 4) Governor Blanco, who recently released her actions in preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina, states that no one ever predicted or

The first action that could drastically reduce the damages and loss of life is educating the population in New Orleans. There needs to be several kinds of education provided for the residents of the city. The pre-dissemination of the evacuation and disaster plan could have made a drastic difference in the number of lives lost (Boyd, Wolshon, & Heerden, 2009). This way the citizens of New Orleans would have known how to react and what to expect on the event of a hurricane. If those who could not self-evacuate would have known of the resources available to assist them in evacuating the death tolls could have been drastically reduced. Almost half of those who died due to hurricane Katrina were over the age of seventy-four (Plyer, 2014). It is tragic that those who were the least able to protect themselves were abandoned to the caprice of the storm. Through informing citizens of the plans and resources available to them in the event of disaster another tragedy like Hurricane Katrina can be prevented.

Katrina traveled into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26 and started to expand. When the storm reached the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane however, deteriorated before making it to Louisiana to a Category 3 on August 29 with winds at 145mph. Due to the 20 to 30 foot storm surge and levee failure, it resulted with the infrastructure critically damaged from Florida to Texas. State and local agencies use the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model to know whom and when to evacuate to include what routes people should take. There was argument on who failed the devastated areas, since the assistance needed could not get to the certain areas due to massive flooding and bridges destroyed. Even though there was no one agency to blame through the lack of coordination and communication from local agencies up through the Federal Government, the lessons learned where noticed within hours and days after the storm arrived, the local population felt as being neglected or forgotten.