HURRICANE KATRINA - ENQUIRY INTO STRATEGIES

In the USA there are two levels of organizations that deal with disasters.

  1. FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their job is ‘to prepare for and assist in major disasters’ which often cut across State boundaries. FEMA come in when the President of the US declares an emergency.
  2. Emergency Coordinator at a State level.

In 2004 a practice exercise - the ‘Hurricane Pam Exercise’took place based on a category 5 Hurricane hitting New Orleans.

They found that the levees around New Orleanscould only cope with a category 3 hurricane so the STRATEGY was‘EDUCATE AND EVACUATE’ since the city would be flooded.

  • The National Hurricane Centre is part of the education programme. The following paragraph is taken from their web site

"Preparation through education is less costly than learning through tragedy."
- MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR
NATIONALHURRICANECENTER

The goal of this Hurricane Awareness Web site is to inform the public about the hurricane hazards and provide knowledge which can be used to take ACTION. This information can be used to save lives at work, home, while on the road, or on the water.

  • New Orleans or ‘The Big Easy’ as locals call it, is one of the poorest cities in America, 1/3rd are below the poverty line. During the exercise a questionnaire showed
  • 70% would leave
  • 300,000 would not leave – of these 127,000 could not leave because they had no vehicle

So buses would be needed to evacuate the poor and the ill.

  • Local people would have to look after themselves for the first 48 hours after which FEMA would be in place to take over the relief operation. People who couldn’t get out of the city were to get themselves to large buildings on higher ground e.g. the Superdome. FEMA would supply water, food, medicine, sanitary supplies to these major shelters.

Try this!

is the National Hurricane Centre page for kids. It has a series of ‘wanted’ posters. Look at these posters (Files: Poster 1 and Poster 2)and, in a group, discuss what you think of them. Do you all agree you would be well prepared for a hurricane after you had studied them? Design your own poster to warn of the dangers of a hurricane.

Try this!

Look at the sequence of events and news images from each day of the week of the hurricane, using the BBC video resources

and the following headlines and decide how well this strategy worked.

Complete a table with 2 columns headed ‘Where strategy worked well’, ‘Where strategy failed’ then write your conclusions on the success of the strategy.

HEADLINES – like many headlinessome of these give differing opinions of the same situation.

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Other SHORT TERM STRATEGIESafter evacuation

Draining the water out of New Orleans.

Try this!

Go to

Or

for block diagrams to show how the water is being drained . Describe the method.

Try this!

Describe problems occurring in the relief plan as indicated in the article below

ROW SURROUNDS KATRINA RELIEF PLAN

By Gavin Stamp
BBC News Business Reporter

CONTRACTS AWARDED FOR THE HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF EFFORT ARE BEING INVESTIGATED AMID CLAIMS OF WASTE OF MONEY AND POLITICAL BIAS.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and other public agencies have awarded $11.6bn (£6.5bn) in contracts and aid for Katrina clear-up duties.

More than $62bn in federal funding has been approved for the relief effort after what could be the costliest natural disaster in US history. So far, 15 contracts worth more than $100m have been awarded for debris removal, construction of temporary housing and transport services. Five contracts worth more than $500m have been handed out.

The New York Times reported that 80% of Fema contracts were awarded without bidding or following limited competition, according to government records seen by the newspaper.

But the US House of Representatives has already begun an investigation into how contracts were awarded amid concerns over inconsistencies in pricing and the capacity of some firms to fulfil huge orders. Full accountability was critical, he stressed, given the huge amount of money being spent.

A senior figure within the Department of Homeland Security, which ultimately oversees the relief effort, said he had concerns about the lack of documentation relating to certain contracts. "Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," Richard Skinner, the department's inspector general, told the New York Times. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste. "When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement." Federal agencies are permitted to approve public contracts without normal competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances".

Allegations of political favouritism have also surfaced. The ranking Democratic member of the House Homeland Security Committee claimed the contract process had become politicised."There is just more of the good-ol'-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Congressman, told the New York Times. The New York Times reported that several companies which had been awarded contracts had links with prominent Republican politicians.

LONG TERM STRATEGIES

Rebuilding.

‘Most of New Orleans remains so crippled and dangerous and rotten that only a handful of residents and business owners have been permitted to return. ‘

Protection Kits. The pollution, combined with the lack of regular medical services in the region, has raised serious questions about the safety of New Orleans and other coastal towns as people longing for home begin to go back.

Oxfam Americais developing a programme to give every returning resident a protective kit. Each kit would contain waterproof suits, goggles, shoe covers, and masks, along with information about potential hazards. Volunteers would give out the kits at the security checkpoints that now stand at the major entrances to affected cities.

The Governor of Louisiana, has asked Washington for the rules for aid money to be changed. At present the Federal aid money pays for overtime after national disasters, but it does not pay basic wages.

‘Many districts are near to financial collapse because they have no money from taxes’. People and businesses have disappeared in the evacuation.

Facing financial disaster the Mayor of New Orleans, announced last night that the city would lay off 3,000 employees, or about 40 per cent of its total payroll.

The White House called on Americans to conserve energy to help ease the impact of the worst disruption to the nation's energy supply in decades.

Try This!

you will find an annotated map of New Orleans one month after the hurricane.

Research the sites

‘One year on’

and recent news sites on the current state of New Orleans.

Evaluate (what do these resources tell you about) the level of success of the longer term strategies?

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