Essay on The Roles of Homeland Security

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).

The devastating and deeply rooted traumatic effects of Hurricane Katrina will live in the psyches of the people of New Orleans and beyond for generations to come. Katrina was the largest and third strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States barreling in as a Category 5 with up to 175 mile-per-hour winds and a 20-ft storm surge that would create a humanitarian emergency with the likes never before seen in the United States. This hurricane caused unimaginable death, destruction, and displacement, leaving a known death toll of 1,836 and an unknown number thought to be washed out to sea. The real truth is we will never know exactly how many people lost their lives during Hurricane Katrina.

When a disaster strikes, part of FEMA’s duty is to make sure people are prepared with sufficient supplies in order to improve the situation. FEMA’s second failed attempt in response to the storm was with transporting citizens out of the city. Despite the early warnings for New Orleans citizens to evacuate some decided to stay since they themselves lacked the transportation to leave or some believed they could wait out the storm similar to what they had done in the past with other hurricanes. With the amount of citizens that stayed in the city, FEMA

Due the rapid flooding, whole neighborhoods were engulfed in water, numerous residents became stranded, and could be seen on the roofs of buildings across the city. A neighborhood TV channel reported New Orleans was encountering broad flooding due to levee damage, clean water was scarce, and the city was electrically deficient and was estimated to last for weeks. At day’s end, the Mayor of New Orleans described the considerable death toll with reports of bodies floating on the water throughout the city. The National Guard set up morgues all throughout the city. Coordination of rescue efforts days to come were hard due to lack of communication. Telephones and internet access became nonfunctional due to line breaks or power failures. Often, reporters were asked to brief public officials on the conditions in areas where information wasn’t reaching them. All local television stations and newspapers were quickly relocated, as broadcasting and internet became an essential method of distributing information to evacuees and the rest of the world for reports of what was occurring in the city. (Silverman)

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, two days later roughly eighty percent of New Orleans was underwater. This hurricane ranked number three in the thirty deadliest US Hurricanes (Weather Underground, 2007). This disaster has had a ripple effect on the economy, the environment, the population of New Orleans, and the habitats of animals in that area. It also put to death over 1,500 people in Louisiana, more than half were senior citizens. In New Orleans, 134,000 housing units —70% of all occupied units — suffered damage from this Hurricane.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands of people in New Orleans without adequate water, food, shelter, and physical security. Law enforcement was in disarray as 200 New Orleans Police officers left their post. The Louisiana National Guard was short on personnel and much of their equipment was unserviceable due to flooding. Thousands of people needed help and critical distribution of resources from Defense Support of Civilian Authorities (DSCA) failed.

The hurricane brought social, economic, and morale parameters into play. New Orleans lost 95,000 jobs in the first ten month after the hurricane (Effects of Hurricane Katrina, 2012). Unemployment became a nightmare thus making living arrangement unbearable. Government agencies were having a hard time keeping up with unemployment thus making many residents

In this research paper, I am going to discuss the plan that the Department of Homeland Security has set forth for the years of 2012-2016. This plan outlines the entire vision of the department to essentially accomplish their missions and goals. The plan consists of missions varying from border security to cyber security. We must not forget the men and women on the front line working hard to ultimately secure and provide safety for the United States of America.

Hurricane Katrina affected millions of people and its aftermath has continued to affect Louisiana’s economy and environment to this day. In addition to the estimated 1,833 people that died due to the storm, millions of others were displaced from their homes in the surrounding areas (Zimmermann, 2015). According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $108 billion in damages (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, 2015). The storm caused extensive damage to the coast due to intense waves, and an estimated 80 percent of New Orleans and the surrounded area were flooded for an extended period of time.

On august 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the United States gulf coast as a category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale. The 400 mile wide storm brought heavy rains and winds in excess of 140 miles per hour to states along the gulf coast. The widespread devastation resulted in thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to be displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage (History.com). While the storm did cause significant damage, the primary cause of most of the devastation was the result of levees along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal being breeched. With an average elevation of roughly two feet below sea level, the city of New Orleans suffered major devastation from flooding once the waters breeched the levees and walls; by some estimates more than 80% of the city was flooded. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there were 1,833 deaths attributed to the storm both directly and indirectly (FEMA.gov). The long term impacts of Hurricane Katrina are still to be known. Now more than ten years later the city of New Orleans and its residents continue to feel the effects of the devastating storm. The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 before Katrina (April 2000) to an estimated 230,172 after Katrina (July 2006) a decrease of 254,502 people and a loss of over half of the city’s population. By July of 2014, the population was back up to 384,320 (Plyer,

Beyond the devastation, Hurricane Katrina displaced more than one million residents living near the Gulf Coast, many of them returning within a few days, but over a month later over half a million residents remained displaced (Plyer, n.d.). The population of New Orleans decreased from nearly 485,000 in the year 2000, to only 230,000 in July, 2006, and in 2012 the population numbers were still only 76 percent of the total in the year 2000 (Plyer,

Late August, 2005 one of the deadliest and most destructive hurricanes ever, bombarded the Louisiana and Mississippi Boarder causing mass destruction (Zimmermann, 2012). Communication failures during Hurricane Katrina caused undue death and destruction in the areas affected, while creating more challenges for the first responders. Millions of people who lived along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans were left homeless and approximately 1, 836 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that occurred afterwards (Zimmermann, 2012). Hurricane Katrina destroyed the majority of the core communications infrastructure throughout the Gulf Coast region; disabling 911 emergency call centers and disrupting local emergency services (The White House, 2005).

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.

Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with tremendous force at daybreak, August 29, 2005, severely punishing regions that included the city of New Orleans and its neighboring state Mississippi. Resulting in a total of just over 1700 people killed, and hundreds of thousands missing. When we think of Hurricane Katrina stories, we think of stories that were published by the media such as, “Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane's storm surge a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast was the highest ever measured in the United States.

Before we discuss disaster management, it is important to briefly sum up the events of the events that began on August 25, 2005 to fully understand the brevity of the situation. Meteorologists began warning inhabitants of the regions that were hit by Katrina on August 23, 2005. By the 28th, evacuations were under way, that day, the National Weather Service predicted that after the storm hit, “most of the [Gulf Coast] area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer.” (Spowart, 2015) New Orleans was particularly vulnerable. More than half of the city was built below sea level, and the levees protecting it were built on porous sand. The poorest parts of the city were completely unprepared for a storm surge. Many of these citizens lacked transportation and could not evacuate, and were left to wait out Katrina in their