It’s been more than a week since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, causing unimaginable devastation to New Orleans and large portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I expect we’re all weary of the 24/7 news reports by now, but I’d like to encourage everyone to donate money if they are able, and I’d like to provide a forum here to discuss the catastrophe.
Both the President and Congress are promising investigations on what went wrong during the first stages of the rescue and relief effort. Here are some of the things I expect they will find:
1. When a mandatory evacuation is ordered, state and local officials need to take responsibility to enforce it, and to provide transportation and other necessities to those who don’t have the means on their own.
2. FEMA needs to be much better organized, and have resources pre-positioned in strategic areas, ready to deploy as quickly and efficiently as possible. They also need the ability to improvise a solution to meet the needs of whatever situation is thrown at them. That being said, the very scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans and rupturing the levees has been discussed at the Federal level for years. FEMA really has little excuse for not anticipating this and being ready for it.
3. Communication infrastructure needs to be improved. This includes radio coms for emergency responders and coordination among government departments, agencies, and NGOs. If telephone landlines, cell phone transmission facilities, and Internet communications are vulnerable to a single disaster (flood, nuclear blast, etc.) there must be other solutions (e.g. satellite) available to meet the need. We also need a more streamlined bureaucracy for help requests from local officials to federal agencies, etc.
4. The absence of law and order causes society to revert to chaos and violence. If local police are unable to maintain control, the National Guard needs to be ready to step in quickly to restore order. If (and only if) the state governor requests it, the DoD’s Northern Command should back them up in short order as well. This last directive, I believe, did happen. The US Navy and other branches of service were ready with amphibious landing craft, helicopters, and humanitarian supplies, but due to miscommunication (mostly traceable to FEMA) they were not able to be used effectively for days. (See point #3 above.)
Comments?
