HURRICANE KATRINA - ENQUIRY INTO STRATEGIES
In the USA there are two levels of organizations that deal with disasters.
1. FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their job is ‘to prepare for and
assist in major disasters’ which often cut across State boundaries. FEMA come in when
the President of the US declares an emergency.
2. Emergency Coordinator at a State level.
In 2004 a practice exercise - the ‘Hurricane Pam Exercise’ took place based on a category 5
Hurricane hitting New Orleans.
They found that the levees around New Orleans could only cope with a category 3 hurricane so
the STRATEGY was ‘EDUCATE AND EVACUATE’ since the city would be flooded.

The National Hurricane Centre is part of the education programme. The following
paragraph is taken from their web site http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
The goal of this Hurricane Awareness Web site is to
inform the public about the hurricane hazards and
provide knowledge which can be used to take
ACTION. This information can be used to save lives
at work, home, while on the road, or on the water.
"Preparation through education
is less costly than learning
through tragedy."
- MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR
NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER

New Orleans or ‘The Big Easy’ as locals call it, is one of the poorest cities in America,
1/3rd are below the poverty line. During the exercise a questionnaire showed
o 70% would leave
o 300,000 would not leave – of these 127,000 could not leave because they had no
vehicle
So buses would be needed to evacuate the poor and the ill.

Local people would have to look after themselves for the first 48 hours after which
FEMA would be in place to take over the relief operation. People who couldn’t get out of
the city were to get themselves to large buildings on higher ground e.g. the Superdome.
FEMA would supply water, food, medicine, sanitary supplies to these major shelters.
Try this!
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/kids.shtml is the National Hurricane Centre page for
kids. It has a series of ‘wanted’ posters. Look at these posters (Files: Poster 1 and Poster 2)
and, in a group, discuss what you think of them. Do you all agree you would be well prepared for
a hurricane after you had studied them? Design your own poster to warn of the dangers of a
hurricane.
Try this!
Look at the sequence of events and news images from each day of the week of the hurricane,
using the BBC video resources
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/americas/05/katrina/html/default.stm
and the following headlines and decide how well this strategy worked.
Complete a table with 2 columns headed ‘Where strategy worked well’, ‘Where strategy failed’
then write your conclusions on the success of the strategy.
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HEADLINES – like many headlines some of these give differing opinions of the same situation.
Katrina – final death toll 1,213
10,000s are expected
to be killed by Katrina
US Government spending needed to repair
Hurricane Katrina damage may turn out to be just
half of early estimates, or about $100 billion
Head of NEMA says ‘There
had to be an orderly
evacuation and planned food
delivery or it would have been
chaos’
People in the
Superdome had little food or water and were living in third
world conditions for over 3 days before they were
evacuated.
18 year old says ‘I found a
Hundreds of school buses
were parked ready but in an school bus and decided to pick
up my family and neighbours
area that was flooded.
and drive them to safety. Noone was coming to help us.
There was no TV – we didn’t
know what was happening’.
Women were being raped,
men were wandering
around with guns, people
were looting – there was no
law and order.
I had no food or water. All the
local shopkeepers had gone. I
needed provisions for my
children.’
AN INVESTIGATION began yesterday into the Bush Administration’s payment of
$236 million (£133 million) to rent three cruise ships to house victims of Hurricane
Katrina.
The payment means that every week each evacuee on the three ships, which now
sit more than half empty in the Mississippi River, costs taxpayers more than twice
the cost of a seven-day Caribbean cruise.
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Other SHORT TERM STRATEGIES after evacuation
Draining the water out of New Orleans.
Try this!
Go to http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1766989,00.html
Or http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/americas/05/katrina/html/default.stm
for block diagrams to show how the water is being drained . Describe the method.
Try this!
Describe problems occurring in the relief plan as indicated in the article below
ROW SURROUNDS KATRINA RELIEF PLAN
By Gavin Stamp
BBC News Business Reporter
CONTRACTS AWARDED FOR THE HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF EFFORT ARE BEING
INVESTIGATED AMID CLAIMS OF WASTE OF MONEY AND POLITICAL BIAS.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and other public agencies have awarded
$11.6bn (£6.5bn) in contracts and aid for Katrina clear-up duties.
More than $62bn in federal funding has been approved for the relief effort after what could be
the costliest natural disaster in US history. So far, 15 contracts worth more than $100m have
been awarded for debris removal, construction of temporary housing and transport services.
Five contracts worth more than $500m have been handed out.
The New York Times reported that 80% of Fema contracts were awarded without bidding or
following limited competition, according to government records seen by the newspaper.
But the US House of Representatives has already begun an investigation into how contracts
were awarded amid concerns over inconsistencies in pricing and the capacity of some firms to
fulfil huge orders. Full accountability was critical, he stressed, given the huge amount of money
being spent.
A senior figure within the Department of Homeland Security, which ultimately oversees the
relief effort, said he had concerns about the lack of documentation relating to certain contracts.
"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," Richard Skinner,
the department's inspector general, told the New York Times. "They were under a lot of pressure
and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste. "When you do
something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and
mismanagement." Federal agencies are permitted to approve public contracts without normal
competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances".
Allegations of political favouritism have also surfaced. The ranking Democratic member of the
House Homeland Security Committee claimed the contract process had become politicised.
"There is just more of the good-ol'-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Bennie
Thompson, a Mississippi Congressman, told the New York Times. The New York Times
reported that several companies which had been awarded contracts had links with prominent
Republican politicians.
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LONG TERM STRATEGIES
Rebuilding.
‘Most of New Orleans remains so crippled and dangerous and rotten that only a handful of
residents and business owners have been permitted to return. ‘
Protection Kits. The pollution, combined with the lack of regular medical services in the region,
has raised serious questions about the safety of New Orleans and other coastal towns as people
longing for home begin to go back.
Oxfam America is developing a programme to give every returning resident a protective kit.
Each kit would contain waterproof suits, goggles, shoe covers, and masks, along with
information about potential hazards. Volunteers would give out the kits at the security
checkpoints that now stand at the major entrances to affected cities.
The Governor of Louisiana, has asked Washington for the rules for aid money to be
changed. At present the Federal aid money pays for overtime after national disasters, but
it does not pay basic wages.
‘Many districts are near to financial collapse because they have no money from taxes’.
People and businesses have disappeared in the evacuation.
Facing financial disaster the Mayor of New Orleans, announced last night that the city
would lay off 3,000 employees, or about 40 per cent of its total payroll.
The White House called on Americans to conserve energy to help ease the impact of the worst
disruption to the nation's energy supply in decades.
Try This!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1802745,00.html
you will find an annotated map of New Orleans one month after the hurricane.
Research the sites
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/americas/05/katrina/html/default.stm ‘One year on’
and recent news sites on the current state of New Orleans.
Evaluate (what do these resources tell you about) the level of success of the longer term
strategies?
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