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Government emergency response natural disasters

Government improved It's emergency response?

What makes us think that the government will be any more responsive now than it was in 2005. Has the government really changed or has it gotten worse in response to disasters, lets recap what happened. In 2005, the deadly Hurricane Katrina struck the United States with winds peaking at 175 miles an hour. The toll of the storm was staggering – the final death toll was 1,836, with 705 still reported missing. An estimated 15 million people were affected by the hurricane due to a wounded economy, necessary evacuations, heightened gas prices, and tainted drinking water. There were almost $81 million dollars in property damage, making it one of the most financially destructive storms of US history.

Such a deadly, horrendous occurrence should bring almost full aid from the American government, but the people were ultimately disappointed with the government response.  FEMA was criticized for being unorganized, complete with an untrained staff, poor communication systems, and uncoordinated delivery arrangements. It took about 3 days after the storm struck for FEMA to fully grasp the damage it caused. The federal and state plans for aiding citizens (in particular Louisiana) never coordinated with each other and often received differentiating orders. Emergency housing was heavily criticized – cruise ships that were utilized for emergency housing were filled to only 35% occupancy, which caused the cost per evacuee to triple. One of their biggest shortcomings was the planning of delivering water supplies. Many times, the supplies were not tracked at all. Some places would get twice the amount of water that they needed, while other places got only half of what they needed.

 In 2004, one short year before incident, there was a National Response Plan issued to give guidelines to prepare for a natural disaster. After utilizing and reviewing the report, experts are now calling the information “confusing” and the cause of several duplicated communication and effort. A House inquiring in February stated that the failure of the government to bring needed help to its citizen caused further deaths and suffering. Many blame FEMA’s incompetence on the fact that almost all of the government attention has been turned to terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. However, Homeland Security issued a report complete with 38 recommendations. They are hoping that the disastrous consequences of the government failure to protect its citizens during times of crisis will become “lessons learned.” These recommendations have been and currently are being installed, but our troubles are not all behind us. With the tropical cyclone activity rising to above normal since 1995, storms are promised to be arriving to the US once again. The best way to be prepared is to prepare emergency food and water storage, emergency housing, and evacuation plans yourself – who knows when FEMA will get to you.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/14/fema.ig/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12307820/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/watchdog-katrina-response-criticism-deserved/#.UazUwoZW2So

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