Simply Politics & News

[Gulfbreeze]

What are you kidding me? I have plenty of sympathy for someone going through this situation as I have myself... I have spent thousands of hours volunteering in these type of situations.. The situation in New Orleans is the Fault of the Inept Gov there just look at how well devastated areas in Mississippi Alabama and Florida have bounced back...
The Local handling of all of this in Louisiana is a joke...


Katrina's lessons learned?

August 29, 2006

As if the one-year-later reflections on the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina were not sobering enough by themselves, another storm is making its way toward the American mainland. Ernesto is yet another reminder that the awesome forces of nature call for prudent human planning -- not for the impossible task of preventing them, but for the crucial task of minimizing loss of life.

On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf coast, spreading horrific damage from Louisiana to Alabama. The tragic images from New Orleans, where more than 1,000 people died and tens of thousands who had unable to evacuate endured days of thirst, hunger and lack of medical care, are the images the world best remembers: people clinging to rooftops or trying to swim through the foul sludge of the storm surge after the levees failed; thousands crammed into the Superdome, which was not equipped to handle the situation; the spray-painted Xs on homes where bodies were found by relief workers; and on and on in a painful portrait of human suffering exacerbated by an inept official response.

Yet The Big Easy was not the only place to suffer. Much of the Mississippi Gulf coast, a tourism-dependent stretch laden with casinos, was virtually obliterated. Evacuations were generally more successful there, so there was less loss of life, but the impact of the storm was staggering nonetheless.

Alabama did not feel the full strength of Katrina's fury, but it was not unscathed. Bayou La Batre, center of the state's already struggling seafood industry, was heavily damaged. Dozens of shrimp boats and other vessels were sunk or tossed far inland by the storm. Some are still not back on the water.

A lot of finger-pointing followed the storm, especially as the relief efforts in New Orleans proved scandalously slow to start and, at least initially, sadly inadequate for the scale of the situation. Clearly, local officials in New Orleans were inexcusably unprepared, despite having lived for decades with the knowledge that a major hurricane would present an enormous threat to the city that sits below sea level.

For all its French Quarter decadence, New Orleans as a whole is a poor city. As Katrina so dramatically underscored, much of its population lacked transportation and had no way to evacuate. Evacuation orders came late, but with no mass transportation arranged, for tens of thousands of people evacuation was impossible anyway. One of the most haunting images from New Orleans was the photograph of scores of buses sitting uselessly in a flooded parking lot.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency performed poorly, plainly showing the effects of unqualified leadership and its merger into the huge and cumbersome Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's weak initial response, coupled with a hopelessly inept local response and an only marginally better response from state officials in Louisiana, made a terrible situation only more so. The performance of emergency management officials in Alabama and Mississippi was light years ahead.

One year later, and with another storm building, the crucial question is whether Katrina's lessons, taught with so harsh a hand and at such terrible cost, have been learned. Alabama, it is gratifying to note, appears well prepared. Pre-positioning of emergency relief supplies and an eminently sensible plan to use the state's network of community colleges as shelters have the state well equipped to care for evacuees and to quickly begin recovery efforts.

But what about New Orleans? The same bungling mayor remains in office, inexplicably re-elected only a few weeks ago. (Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, much criticized for her peformance, also remains in office.) The levee system, although repaired, remains suspect. Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acknowledge that they are not certain the levees would withstand another hurricane.

Evacuation might be less of a problem, if only because there are far fewer people to evacuate. New Orleans has about half the population it had a year ago.

FEMA has new, far more qualified leadership and claims to have revamped its structure and strategies to be nimbler and more responsive. It hasn't been tested on a large scale since Katrina, so Americans can only hope that the claims are true.

It appears likely that Ernesto will not provide that answer, but some future storm undoubtedly will.



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