Hurricane Katrina



Hurricane Katrina

Federal Emergency Management Agency was created by means of a recognition plan of 1978 that had merged various elements of the Federal response into just one agency. In the year 2003, FEMA became an integral component of the Department of Homeland Security which had been newly established (The White House, 2006). FEMA is responsible for coordinating with Federal assistance during the time of disasters. FEMA also has the main responsibility for giving responses in emergency situations and for coordination for recovery. It continues to monitor for possible disasters and makes use of resources when it anticipates that Federal assistance will be asked for. This tends to happen more often during the season of hurricanes.

Mitigation

In order to handle the national needs, I would have worked in collaboration with FEMA as it operates in ten regional offices and also has two area offices which are responsible for working in relation with States for the purpose of planning for disastrous situations, developing programs of mitigation, and responding to needs during times of disasters. I would have made sure that all the offices have full-time staff work with the Federal authorities, the State and the local partners throughout the year. This is because each office would have been responsible for having civilian reservist personnel who will develop mitigation programs and solve problems when a hurricane emergency or a major disaster situation such as Katrina was declared. When the government of State would have made a request for Federal assistance, I would have worked with FEMA in order to deploy personnel to suitable regional offices as well as the areas of Katrina. It would have been very important for both regions of FEMA to conduct recovery and response operations as Hurricane Katrina had advanced towards Florida, Louisiana (Region VI), Alabama (Region IV) and Mississippi (The White House, 2006).

Preparedness

Preparedness is also a key function of FEMA and I would have made efforts to make sure that it gets applied in order to take effective measures during the Katrina emergency (Moynihan, 2009). The basic design of crisis management system constitutes of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, and together this design assumes an approach that is constant and integrated across these four functions. I would have worked to deploy the function of preparedness as its loss would have limited the ability of FEMA to influence preparation of state and would have weakened the relationships with ...