After reading the Final Report: U.S. House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee to investigate the Preparation and Response to Hurricane Katrina, I’ve came to the conclusion that the lack of response was due to primarily two reasons. One, was the lack of preparation and underestimating the storm, and two the lack of communication during the response effort.
Preparation:
Like Dr. Tapia said during our discussion, New Orleans is below sea level, hurricanes have hit there in the past, also- the people of New Orleans should have been prepared for flooding. The picture to the right shows pretty much exactly what time and where Hurricane Katrina was going to make land-fall. Much like State College is pretty consistent with preparing for major snow storms. Granted the flooding was a little excessive in New Orleans, but the Final Reports stated, they knew the levees were weak, the levees weren’t built to their original design, and that residents near levees reported leaking and damage to the levees months before the hurricane made land fall. The Army Corp. of Engineers advised officials that the levees needed to be repaid. Nothing was ever done because nobody wanted to flip the bill for repairs, and there was confusion about who should take charge of repairing the levees. The Nation Weather Service warned the Gulf Coast of the category five hurricane five days prior to land-fall. With these facts, and several others, I feel like the smartest decision would have been for the governors of the affected areas to order a mandatory evacuation. Eventually governor Blanco ordered a mandatory evacuation, but it was 19 hours prior to Katrina’s land-fall. In my opinion, it should have been ordered at least a day before land-fall. Communications:
Communication damages and failure to implement back-up communication resources impacted the efficacy of the response significantly. I don’t want to focus so much on the civilians not having communications, but the local, state, and federal governments not being able to communicate with each other, which impacted the response negatively. FEMA couldn’t communicate with state emergency management agencies, active duty military personnel had trouble coordinating with the National Guard, most police stations and state troopers didn’t have communications for three days. It was a big web of responders and agencies who couldn’t communicate with each other to coordinate response efforts. According to the Final Report, the Department of Homeland Security developed the National Management System (NIMS) and the Nation Response Plan (NRP), and basically the NRP defines what needs to be done in a massive emergency event and the NIMS defined how to manage the situation. NIMS consist of six major components, one of which is “communications and information management.” I guess my questions is, where was NIMS during Hurricane Katrina? Maybe they wouldn’t have had all the answers to the communication break-down and flaws, but I feel like they could have done a better job at coordination communication efforts during the large-scale emergency. In 2005 the government made it mandatory for state to adopt NRP and NIMS, but if situations and poor responses like Hurricane Katrina happen, what’s the points of forcing state to adopt NRP and NIMS?
Hi Zach – I would agree that the major two issues associated with the events that surrounded Hurricane Katrina are a lack of preparation and communication. I think the underlying cause of a lack of preparation is because of two things. One, people honestly felt that a disaster would not affect them. Even though it had been talked about for years, residents of the Gulf Coast just did not actually believe that they would be impacted by a hurricane. And, even those who did believe that a hurricane would likely strike at some point in their live times, probably did not image that it would do the damage that Hurricane Katrina did. Two, I believe that the path of the hurricane was not what was expected. While forecasters probably predicted the possibility of Katrina taking the path that it did, I do not believe that the probability of the hurricane’s actual path was very high. It is also possible that the strength of the hurricane was underestimated by many. Regardless, the fact that a mandatory evacuation was not ordered sooner— based on what was already known—is beyond my understanding. You asked a very good question with regards to communication, that being: What happened to NIMS? I wish I had the answer. Forcing the states to adopt NIMS and then not carrying it out, is like passing a law and then not enforcing it. Today, as a result of disasters like Katrina and even 9/11, I do not believe we would have the communication problems that we did back in 2005. I think we have done a pretty good job learning from our mistakes. New plans have been enacted and tested. Technology has significantly advanced, especially in terms of communication. I think the biggest safety issue that some face in terms of disasters like hurricanes, is the fact that more and more people are choosing to live closer and closer to the coast.
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI just have a few things pertaining to Jason's comments about your blog as well as some other things for us to think about. We can all say that plans are in place for the next big disaster to occur, but does that mean that the plan won't be touched for years if that's how long it takes for another disaster to occur? Let's say for example that the recovery/response plans for a major hurricane that hits New Orleans is set up and enacted in the year 2012. If the world doesn't come to an end in December, we can expect that a major storm will move through the area again. But by some rare chance that a level 5 hurricane doesn't come around for 10 years, does this mean that the recovery/response plans will really work?
A lot of agencies and abiding groups claim that they will have measures in place to prevent the next Katrina, whether it's natural or artificial. One thing is certain, until we start making adaptive policies, we won't have the right tools available for the next big problem. Policies, like disaster recovery/response plans need to be able to update the types of tools and the policies for the newer methods constantly to be sure that our first responders have everything, that's the latest and greatest to be able to do their job and to do it with an efficiency higher than anything we've seen before. I'd hate to beat the dead horse on this one, but we seriously need to look at our cellular communication grids because I feel there is some serious potential for that technology. A technology that still has redundancy issues to clear up.
Just one final note to Zach, your point was made clearly in the first section, and I think it's something we also need to notice is that there will be people who will stay and think they can make it through the storm, and there will always be until the end of time. As long as we can prevent the same numbers from our past, we will be in much better shape.