The Role Of Civil Engineering In The Causes Of A Natural Disaster

evacuation, making emergency repairs to the levees, and providing food and law and order in an unprepared shelter). These measures, born of necessity, may be quite different from or exceed in scale anything responders have done before. They must be creative and extremely adaptable to execute improvised tactics. Equipping organizations to recognize the novelty in a crisis and improvise skillfully is thus a far different (and far more difficult) matter from preparing mainly to implement preset emergency plans. Scalability and Surge Capacity In many disasters, as Katrina well illustrated, responders must cope with far greater numbers of endangered people or more extensive damage than usual. To scale up operations to handle this surge of demand, emergency agencies require access to resources in larger quantities than normal and frequently to specialized equipment or

Tragic events that cause damage to property and life may destroy the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Communities must be engaged in the various phases from prevention to recovery to build disaster resilient communities. In order to do this, there must be a disaster preparedness plan in place that involves multiple people in various roles.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, fires broke out, corpses were in streets, looting was taking place around the city, floor waters became toxic with sewage and gas. US Army Corps of Engineers came in to pump New Orleans dry; this was a continuous operation. (video: The Lost City of New Orleans: A Case Study) Organizations such as the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, National Guard and others helped the relief effort with housing,

Effective disaster management is highly important when it comes to assisting in rescue and relief to affected. This does not only include post disaster rescue efforts but these disaster management activities should be proactive. They start right from taking preventive measures before the disaster actually occurs and goes on till the effected people are resettled back in their lives. This disaster management pertaining to human life is not only associated with physical well being but also focuses on psychological, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation.

Often, the government responds to natural disasters with thorough preparation and planning. The federal, state, and local levels of government do this in an effort to help reduce injury and property damage as well as ensure the overall safety of the general population. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season saw the costliest and one of the deadliest storms in United States history. This storm was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina displaced of an estimated 645,000 Louisiana citizens (Cepeda, Valdez, Kaplan, & Hill, 2010). This paper will examine…

Ensuring Resilience to Disasters has more tasking’s than another mission and involves many different agencies to accomplish those tasks. The four tasks are to mitigate hazards, enhance preparedness, ensure effective emergency response, and rapidly recover. The main agency that is responsible for these tasking’s is FEMA. FEMA’s mission is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect communities nationwide from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters” (FEMA, 2017, p.2). FEMA works with federal and State services to assist them in accomplishing their goals. They also assist local services by assisting in setting up emergency management agencies (LEMA) and set guidance for Emergency Operations Planning (EOP). EOP’s are “plans that provide an overview of the jurisdiction’s preparedness and response strategies. It describes expected hazards, outlines agency roles and responsibilities, and explains how the jurisdiction keeps the plan current.” (FEMA, 2010,

According to Jack Herrmann is Asst. Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine “Disaster management is the preparation for, response to, and recovery from disaster. While there are different understandings of Disaster Management, it is generally viewed as a cycle with the following five key phases:

The differing needs of a vulnerable population have to be addressed in order to alleviate issues that were noted after Katrina. In particular, the needs which are known prior to a disaster, such as evacuation for the infirmed, elderly, impoverished, and those who lack the means to evacuate. The Department of Homeland Security represented a solution to addressing these needs via a three phase response: “pre-event planning and preparation, the event, and recovery” (Dept. Homeland Security, 2008). It has been widely studied that residents of a vulnerable community may be impacted more severely and are disproportionately affected than those with means following a disaster. Assessing how to prepare for each of the phases represents an issue for emergency managers especially when it comes to those who lack the means to prepare for themselves. Quickly rebuilding homes in a devastated area won’t help a community when a disaster strikes again. Platt stated that “disasters offer a window of opportunity to strengthen communities”, via “construction and change land uses to prevent a recurrence of a disaster”. (Platt, 1998) It also can be argued that following a disastrous event, this is when a true opportunity arises, by providing an opportunity to work through solving the societal issues that are the basis for a vulnerable populous via comprehensive political reforms and

There has been a great development in the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responds to natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and wildfires in California are three major disasters that required a large FEMA response and recovery effort. These three natural disasters stressed the resources and abilities FEMA has in their arsenal. As any good organization does, FEMA learned from their experiences and mistakes in order to handle the next challenge they have to face accordingly. Hurricane Katrina affected over 15 million people, caused $81 billion in property damages, and 90,000 square miles (11 Facts About Hurricane Katrina). There was much controversy over the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency

Critical incidents require immediate action (Levinson & Granot, 2002). Additionally, they also require ongoing support in order to ensure that they are correctly managed and the long-term effects are mitigated (Schneid & Collins, 2001). Addressed here are four specific events - earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tornados. There are ways to mitigate the damage of these events, and there are also ways to try to prepare for them. Additionally, the type of response to these events is important as is the recovery from them. For earthquakes, mitigation is limited. It is possible to build houses and buildings stronger and more able to withstand shaking, and in earthquake-prone areas the cabinets often have latches and large appliances are strapped to the wall (U.S., 2007). People who live there should also have emergency supplies of food and water, and should be prepared for an earthquake by knowing information about evacuation routes (U.S., 2007). The response to earthquakes and the recovery from them are usually strong, because the areas that are most prone are also most prepared. When an earthquake hits in an unusual area, however, it can take much longer to help people and to rebuild the infrastructure.

Junot Diaz once said “Disasters don’t just happen. They are always made possible by a series of often-invisible societal choices that implicate more than just those being drowned or buried in rubble” (Junot Diaz, 1). This quote introduces the idea of what is referred to as a social disaster. A social disaster can be a natural disaster such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes etc. that are associated with some environmental, cultural, or political problem (Hovenac, 1). These societal problems can be a result of the natural disaster but more often issues that have always been there that are uncovered by the event of the natural disaster. When we look back at natural disasters that have occurred in United States, we notice that societal issues also arise with these events. A known example of this is when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States in 2005. As a result of the storm, researchers claimed that the socioeconomic status of those affected by the storm played a vital role in the damages that they face. This natural disaster brought attention to the pressing issue of the socioeconomic imbalance in our country and how it affects those in a natural disaster.

Every emergency or disaster, from a small house fire to a hurricane that devastates entire communities, have a distinct cycle. This is

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

This paper will discuss the differences between two different natural and man-made disasters. The disasters that will be discussed are Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Additionally, this paper will look into the specifics of what constitutes a natural and man-made disaster. Specifically, this paper will look into each disaster to include the events surrounding them; the risks; and the assessments. Furthermore, this paper will look at some of the details of each disaster and why there was so much devastation. Finally, this paper will look at a few similarities, but mainly the differences between the two, and how the effects of each still linger today.

On August 29, 2009, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast. It was a Category 3 Hurricane, according to the Saffir Simpson Scale. Winds gusted to up to 140 miles per hour, and the hurricane was almost 400 miles wide . The storm itself did a tremendous amount of damage, but the storm’s aftermath was cataclysmic. Many claimed that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. This paper will examine the four elements of disaster management – preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation – as well as an analysis on the data presented.