Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Introduction

“I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters”

Above are the words of Chelsea Clinton and the theme of this paper. Life is beautiful! But unanticipated events can destroy all the pleasure and delight. As the above statement, of Miss Clinton suggests, that natural disasters play a major role in destroying one's life to an extent that they have to leave the place where these disasters occur. But there are few people who prefer to stay at their place no matter how hard the situation is. This paper also revolves around the same phenomenon and talks about Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest disaster in the history of the United States and one of the deadliest (Norris & Rosen, 2009; North, et al, 2008). Subsequent flooding from the hurricane caused massive destruction and loss of life in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Despite this massive destruction, a small minority of people remained entrenched in their homes. While the masses had fled, this tiny group of people bunkered down in what remained of their homes. Before this disaster this small group has been part of a typical American suburban neighborhood, they now had lived as holdouts in a nearly uncultivated state with portable toilets, bottled water, electrical generators, and none of the typical infrastructure of a developed country. In such situation there is always remain a chaos. In order to deal with this emergency situation perfect and quick management is often needed. The aim and objective of this paper is also to talk about various perspectives of emergency management in Hurricane Katrina.

Emergency Management

When emergency strikes, all levels of government do what is required and spend but later worry about paying for all the spending. Some governments have contingency or emergency funds for disaster response. It is the responsibility of governments to protect their citizens from disasters but even if a disaster strikes they are responsible for helping them to recover. In most cases emergency funds are exhausted and most governments have to call for some emergency measures. In United States, special session of the legislature is called to seek additional appropriations.

Hurricane Katrina

In case of emergencies like Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 people look towards governments to come to their rescue. Here, Hurricane Katrina has become very crucial for public as emergency response and its management failed. Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region but the response to this devastation by the world's most developed nation was exposed for the world to see. Response came in a very slow and disorganized manner. Poor planning has been one of the key reasons of poor response in the wake of Katrina. Apart from planning other complaints like widespread abuses in government emergency cash assistance programs for disaster victims also came to front. Later reports also found out that late warnings were issued by the officials for mandatory evacuations in the New Orleans area leading to deaths and prolonged ...