what was the government response to hurricane katrina

x years later Hurricane Katrina overran New Orleans, the city is still recovering from a disaster that was as much human-caused as natural.

Katrina, which formed on August 23, 2005, and hitting the Gulf Coast of the US on Baronial 29, was a massive storm that was likely to wreak havoc in the region regardless of how the regime reacted. But the government response was so wildly incompetent that information technology allowed the worst of the catastrophe to continue and sometimes created entirely new, unnecessary problems.

This is the large lesson of Katrina: People will ever accept to bargain with unavoidable natural disasters, simply a poor regime reaction and preparation can pb to many more deaths and untold costs — like it did in Mississippi and Louisiana, especially New Orleans, a decade agone.

1) At to the lowest degree 1,800 people died due to Hurricane Katrina

With a expiry cost of more ane,800, Katrina was the tertiary-deadliest hurricane in US history after Galveston in 1900 (which killed 8,000 to 12,000 people) and Okeechobee in 1928 (which killed ii,500 to 3,000 people), according to United states of america News and World Written report. Merely Katrina is past far the costliest hurricane in economic terms, running upward $108 billion in costs.

Much of this impairment was likely unavoidable: Katrina was a huge, category 3 hurricane when it hit Louisiana and Mississippi, and information technology hit areas — including New Orleans — that were largely beneath ocean level and therefore vulnerable to flooding. Merely many of the issues were worsened — if not acquired — by a regime response that was unable to deal with the storm before, during, and later on it made landfall. The incompetence plagued multiple levels of government, from local police to federal agencies similar FEMA (Federal Emergency Direction Bureau) and the Us Regular army Corps of Engineers.

ii) The levees failed because of bad engineering, not just considering Katrina was also big

A view of the Lower Ninth Ward and Industrial Canal of New Orleans near a point where a levee was breached during Hurricane Katrina.

Lee Celano/AFP via Getty Images

One reason Katrina and the floods it acquired broke through New Orleans's levees was because the storm was too strong. Merely reports since the hurricane have besides exposed some other culprit: shoddy engineering science.

More than vi months subsequently Katrina hitting, the United states Army Corps of Engineers released a report in which they took blame for the levees breaking, apartment-out admitting that the levees were congenital in a disjointed fashion based on outdated data. Much of this, the report revealed, was due to a lack of funding — resulting in a flawed system of levees that was inconsistent in quality, materials, and design. Engineers likewise failed to account for the region's poor soil quality and sinking land, which created more than gaps in barriers.

The federal government was largely culpable for this mess, since it was largely on the Corps — a federal agency — to oversee the construction of the levees after Hurricane Betsy flooded New Orleans in 1965. As the New York Times's Campbell Robertson and John Schwartz reported, a 2006 report placed some of the responsibility for the levees' failures on dysfunctional interactions between local officials and the Corps. But a new paper published in the journal Water Policy this twelvemonth — and penned past one of the authors of the 2006 report — put the blame more than squarely on the Corps, which allegedly fabricated poor decisions during the structure of the levees to save money. The result was some brusk-term savings for taxpayers and the Corps, just ultimately a bigger disaster through Katrina.

This is but one of the many means the federal government failed to forbid a disaster in the lead-up to Katrina. Fifty-fifty though there were always serious concerns virtually how a hurricane could destroy New Orleans, the federal agency in charge of building amend levees and flood walls was at times more worried near money than virtually building proper protections, and relied on outdated data to build what turned out to be deeply flawed structures.

3) Katrina caused the biggest evacuation in U.s. history, but many people couldn't beget to leave

Nearly 1.iii million people left southeast Louisiana and 400,000 evacuated from New Orleans itself, culminating in one of the largest evacuations in US history, co-ordinate to Jed Horne in the Washington Post. But as the New York Times'south David Gonzalez reported equally the storm battered the region, tens of thousands of people remained in the metropolis — not necessarily by pick, but rather because they were besides poor to afford a car or bus fare to leave.

Information technology was common during and later on Katrina to hear people request why anybody didn't just leave New Orleans. But the truth is that many of them couldn't leave — as the Times reported — and the authorities did little to nothing to help them get out of Katrina's path before the hurricane hit.

This is one of the reasons Kanye West infamously said that "George Bush doesn't care about blackness people." Local, state, and federal officials were simply way too wearisome in helping largely poor, black populations, leaving them stranded to deport the brunt of the storm. And while New Orleans has reportedly made improvements in its evacuation plans since 2005, the inadequate response at the fourth dimension of Katrina led to more deaths and pain that could accept otherwise been avoided — particularly amongst impoverished, minority communities.

"Is this what the pioneers of the Ceremonious Rights Movement fought to reach, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty every bit they were by segregation laws?" Mark Naison, a white professor of African-American studies at Fordham Academy, wrote at the time. "If September xi showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation hire past profound social divisions."

4) Federal officials were slow to react to local and state officials' pleas

President George Westward. Bush looks out the window of Air Force One as he flies over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region.

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Afterward the response to Katrina proved to be its own kind of unmitigated disaster, the Bush administration attempted to shift some of the blame to local and state officials — particularly Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Some media outlets, going past information from assistants officials, claimed Blanco didn't declare a state of emergency.

In fact, Horne noted in the Washington Post, Blanco declared a state of emergency on Baronial 26 — a 24-hour interval earlier Mississippi and the White House did, and three days earlier the storm made landfall. And while President George Due west. Bush vacationed in Texas equally the storm hit, Blanco pleaded for the administration to send more aid. At one signal, the Louisiana National Guard asked FEMA for 700 buses — merely, days later, the agency sent only 100, and it took a calendar week to evacuate flood survivors.

This was just one of the many ways FEMA fell brusque even equally local and state officials pleaded for aid and issued warnings to federal officials. Staffed by political appointees with little to no experience in dealing with disasters, the agency bumbled its response to Katrina, causing unnecessary deaths and chaos beyond Louisiana and Mississippi. The horrible response would somewhen help tank Bush's approval ratings, with his administration'south response to Katrina consistently viewed poorly by a majority of Americans.

five) The Superdome wasn't the murderous hellhole government officials fabricated it out to be

The New Orleans Superdome in 2014.

Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Narratives that came out of Katrina portrayed the Superdome, where xxx,000 people were stranded after the tempest, equally lawless, depraved, and cluttered — with reports of murders, rapes, and even sniper attacks on the crowds crammed into the sports stadium.

For instance, New Orleans'south mayor at the time, Ray Nagin, told Oprah Winfrey horror stories of people "in that frickin' Superdome for v days watching expressionless bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people," while Eddie Compass, then the city'due south law chief, told of "little babies getting raped," the Los Angeles Times's Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey reported a month after the storm.

While the scene in the Superdome was far from a paradise, it was not the murderous hellhole that media reports and government officials made it out to be. In fact, only six people died in the Superdome — iv of natural causes, ane of suicide, and ane of a drug overdose. No one was murdered in the stadium, according to Louisiana National Guard Colonel Thomas Beron.

Some of the blame for the sensationalist stories falls on journalists who breathlessly reported some of the outrageous claims about the situation in the Superdome. But a lot of the blame also falls on local, state, and federal officials who, already facing a lot of anarchy and panic due to the affect of Katrina, echoed wild claims about the Superdome that helped foster fifty-fifty more anarchy and panic. And this boosted panic came with a existent cost: In the aftermath, officials focused resources on supposedly restoring club in the Superdome — leaving fewer resources for some of the rescue and reconstruction work that was left to be done. So officials helped create unnecessary panic, and so they dedicated resources to address that panic.

6) New Orleans nevertheless hasn't recovered from Katrina

United states Census Bureau

A decade later Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans metro area still hasn't recovered from the storm. Although the area has grown since 2006, it holds 134,000 fewer residents, more than 39,000 fewer housing units, and about two,000 fewer concern establishments since Katrina hit. Once more, much of this impairment was likely unavoidable in the face of a storm equally strong as Katrina — but the harms could have been at to the lowest degree mitigated by improve government preparation and a stronger response, based on the many reports that accept reviewed the situation since Katrina.

7) New Orleans isn't — and probably tin't exist — fully prepared for another Katrina

New Orleans, one year after Hurricane Katrina.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Despite the massive damage left behind by Katrina, some other storm similar it could still decimate the region again.

A report from the Lens, a local news outlet in New Orleans, and Politifact found that the anti-flooding system congenital subsequently Katrina couldn't handle another storm like information technology. The system could endure a 100-year storm — a tempest with a ane percentage chance of happening on any given year — but Katrina was considered a much stronger 400-twelvemonth tempest. (All the same, the new system is certainly much stronger than what existed before it, so it could diminish a lot of the harm that Katrina caused.)

Another written report past the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council concluded that levees and inundation walls can never exist large or sturdy plenty to fully protect New Orleans from another disaster similar in scope to Katrina.

In fact, this is peradventure the most lasting, unsafe public policy failure after Katrina: The written report noted that the new structures built around the metropolis give a fake sense of security, leading the public to believe that they will be protected if another storm like Katrina comes. But the reality is the nature of New Orleans — mainly, its status as a city largely below sea level — volition always exit it exposed to these kinds of storms and floods. Ultimately, the report concluded that voluntarily relocating people from areas exposed to floods should be considered as a feasible public policy option — otherwise, the same problems may repeat themselves in the future.

This is perchance the most disheartening fact nearly Katrina: 10 years afterwards, something similar it could happen once more.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/8/23/9191907/hurricane-katrina

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