The Separation Of Ethics And Government

Ethics are concerned with the fundamental concepts and principles of decent human conduct; which is having a sense of what is right and wrong. Utilitarianism

Ethics are defined as “a set of moral principles and perceptions about right versus wrong and the resulting philosophy of conduct that is practiced by an individual, group, profession, or culture” (Barker, 2001, p. 159). In the field

In the late summer of 2005, a terrible tragedy occurred that changed the lives of many in the south-east region of the United States. A Category 3, named storm, named Hurricane Katrina, hit the Gulf Coast on the 29th of August and led to the death of 1,836 and millions of dollars’ worth of damage (Waple 2005). The majority of the damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. Waple writes in her article that winds “gusted over 100 mph in New Orleans, just west of the eye” (Waple 2005). Not only was the majority of the damage due to the direct catastrophes of the storm but also city’s levees could no longer hold thus breaking and releasing great masses of water. Approximately, 80% of the city was submerged at sea level. Despite the vast amount

New Orleans was originally founded on high ground overlooking the Mississippi River, above sea level. Also surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, New Orleans was susceptible to hurricanes that would come up the coast into the Gulf. Originally New Orleans was naturally protected by “coastal swamps that helped absorb the energy of storm surges before they reached dry land.” (Stillman 228) At this point Americans were more concerned with the floods that happened annually from the Mississippi River. In the early days, settlers built a mile long levee to block overflows from the mighty Mississippi while landowners constructed their own levees.

On the morning of August Twenty-ninth, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region. The storm brought the water to about twenty feet high, swallowing eighty percent of the New Orleans city immediately. The flood and torrential rainstorm wreaked havoc and forced millions of people evacuate from the city. According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, Katrina caused approximately one hundred and eight billion dollars in damage. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive disasters have ever occurred in the United States, but it also revealed a catastrophic government at all levels’ failure in responding to the contingency.

Hurricane Katrina hit the southeastern coast of the United States in August of 2005. The eye of the storm went through the city of New Orleans and caused thousands of casualties and more than eighty billion dollars in damage (Schwartz). However, poor engineering and design allowed the immense flooding to breach the levee system and flood most of the metropolitan area. Despite the Delta Service Corps admitting that they knew of the possible failures for over twenty years, they claimed that insufficient budgets set by Congress and local governments prohibited them from restructuring and preserving the levees (Can We Save New Orleans?). Katrina was the third most intense land falling tropical storm in United States history. The combination of

The city of New Orleans lies below sea level in a bowl bordered by levees which prevent the high waters of the Mississippi River from flooding the city. These levees were put to the test on August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit, causing severe destruction along the Gulf coast. Three concrete floodwalls protecting the city of New Orleans fractured and burst under the weight of surging waters from the hurricane, killing hundreds and resulting in an estimated $100 to $150 billion worth of damage (Luegenbiehl, 2007). In the aftermath of the storm, society placed part of the blame on design flaws that compromised the safety of the levees and endangered the public. Under the Flood Control Act of 1965, Congress had mandated the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to protect the city from a Category 3 storm, yet the floodwalls were unable to withstand the force of Hurricane Katrina, which was eventually classified as Category 3 (Grunwalk & Warrick, 2005). The Corps pointed towards a massive surge that exceeded the height of the floodwalls, but investigations by civil engineers and other experts pointed towards the inadequate design and construction by the Corps of Engineers as the cause of the failure (Englehardt et al., 2013). The Corps acted in a manner contradicting ethical engineering behavior by being less than forthcoming about deficiencies that were accumulating in the overall system. In order to prevent future disasters involving human life, the government should require

Hurricane Katrina is infamous: the storm that buried the vibrant city of New Orleans under up to sixteen feet of water. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, but the crimes committed against the storm’s survivors in the months prior, setting them up for devastation, were the true tragedies. Not only were the citizens of the Big Easy neglected pre-Katrina, but they remained on the back burner of the federal government for days after the storm hit. Citizens of New Orleans - who had just been put through one of the worst natural disasters the United States had ever seen - were treated like animals, or foreign refugees seeking sovereignty in the US. They were not treated with the common decency an American citizen deserves, but why did this happen? The answer is simple, because the politicians on all levels, before, during, and after the storm, neglected the citizens that trusted them. City, State, and Federal government officials incorrectly used funds that had been allocated for disaster relief, and to the repair of the levees for many years leading up to the disaster. Because of this corrupt behavior, the people of New Orleans were caught in a very unnatural disaster to accompany the storm. The low class citizens of New Orleans were hit with unparalleled injustices. The atrocities committed against these innocent people was no less than a war waged against them, but the

Unfortunately, there was a failure of managing the risk factors associated with an actual hurricane affecting New Orleans. The current emergency plan in place at the time of Hurricane Katrina only prepared the area for a Category 3 hurricane. No one anticipated a higher category hurricane could or would hit the area. They took for granted that the probability of a stronger hurricane occurring was low, thus overlooking major risk management identifiers. When Hurricane Katrina actually hit, emergency planners were now being reactive instead of

On August 29, 2005, disaster struck New Orleans, Louisiana in the form of Hurricane Katrina. Since the city is 10 feet below sea level, it is susceptible to large amounts of flooding (Bunch, 2005).

Hurricane Katrina was a storm that should not have caused as much damage as it did. Hurricane Katrina was category one when it made landfall in the state of Florida and was only a category three storm when it made landfall at the Louisiana-Mississippi border (Zimmerman). The weak infrastructure and physical characteristics of cities like New Orleans experience a much greater impact than would normally be expected with a category three hurricane. 1,833 people were killed, the majority of whom were in Louisiana (CNN Library). The total damage to property, buildings, infrastructure, etc. was $108 billion, the most damage ever incurred by a hurricane in the United States (CNN Library). Seventy percent of all occupied housing in New Orleans were destroyed and hundreds of thousands were displaced from the city (CNN Library). Overall, Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history and could have been avoided had actions been taken earlier and had infrastructure been better.

Ethics are the “standards of conduct that indicate how one should behave based on moral duties and virtues.”

In comparison, Hurricane Andrew had a central pressure of 922 mb (1), and “wiped out nearly 30,000 homes and damaged more than 100,000 others (Powers 23). Similarly, Katrina brought violent winds that decimated New Orleans with an estimated one-hundred billion dollars in repairs (Waple 6). According to scientists in the Nova ScienceNow episode “Hurricanes”, the immense damage is particularly due to the location of New Orleans, which is ten feet below sea level and is bordered by a lake and the sea. Areas below sea level or near a body of water, in this case two bodies of water, tend to require levees to prevent flooding. Having a town situated in a place where hurricanes are prone to occur can be considered a human disaster as they put themselves in harms way. This bad situation, however, cannot be helped due to the economic opportunities of its location, so in many ways a disaster was inevitable. Nonetheless, Katrina was a natural phenomenon that ravaged the coastal city of New Orleans.

Ethics is defined as moral principles of conduct, which people usually agree with. Unlike in law there is no punishment involved in ethical values, if you don't follow according with the standards. There are many things that influence ethical behaviour. These can be personal reflection, religious beliefs, culture, experiences and family influences. If broadly speaking, ethics is the science or study of the morality of how humans act through the medium of natural reason.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles correlated to human behavior concerning the rightness and wrongness of specific conduct, and to the good and bad that influences and ends those actions (Ditonary.com, 2011). In other words, ethics is the choice people effect in regards to a decision they need to achieve. Without ethics directing the choice an individual makes, moral preferences of what should or should not be done becomes irrelevant. While ethical decisions are made every day there are two different regions in which these choices are made.