{"id":42,"date":"2005-09-04T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-04T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/2005\/09\/failure-in-responding-to-katrina\/"},"modified":"2005-09-04T12:03:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-04T16:03:00","slug":"failure-in-responding-to-katrina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/failure-in-responding-to-katrina\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure in responding to Katrina"},"content":{"rendered":"
So soon after the embarrassing failure of emergency response it\u2019s a little risky to venture an explanation. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The appearance is that government planning for emergency response to \u201cthe big one\u201d failed to include providing food and shelter for those stranded by it. <\/span><\/p>\n

My opinion is that the problem was mainly that FEMA kept following the plan they had on file even when it was apparently not working. \u00a0\u00a0I think both key failures, the bad plan and bad leadership in response, come from the scale of the problem. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The disaster caused by Katrina was different in kind and was treated as only being different in degree.<\/p>\n

I really don\u2019t want to minimize the direct fault of the personnel in charge of the state and federal response, even if exemplary ability to change plans in the midst of a crisis may not be in their job description.\u00a0 \u00a0It should be. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The plans that would have worked fine for smaller disasters were incompetent for the bigger one. <\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cbig one\u201d did surprising things.\u00a0\u00a0 For one, the evacuation plan seemed to selectively evacuate the people who ran everything in response to unexpectedly heavy storm damage and the loss of all communication. <\/span><\/p>\n

The effect was to tear the institutions of community, city and state apart. \u00a0\u00a0Blinded and crippled it\u2019s no wonder that the emergency responders could only seem to stagger around.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Judging from results, that was the plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at it from the other side it\u2019s possible that had the planners noticed that the \u201cbig one\u201d would be different in kind they\u2019d also see that the state and federal response would be necessarily inadequate. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Maybe the needed difference in response would have been good local civil defense plans and supplies. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If nothing else the people stuck behind have clearly acted helpless and apparently had no civil defense training whatever. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That they acted helpless was partly their own fault of course, but if there were only stores of critical supplies left for the purpose, it might have made a huge difference in both fact and appearance. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It might take leadership, like federal mandates, to persuade neighborhoods to do adequate civil defense, but the professional planners probably need to do a better job of telling the feds horror stories like that of New Orleans to persuade them to do it. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots of other blame to go around, for the breach of the levy on Lake Pontchartrain, for building below sea level on a storm path in the first place, etc. The fact is that you can\u2019t always be prepared for the worst and nature is full of hazards.\u00a0 \u00a0Like one old friend liked reminding me, this is life, and nobody but nobody gets out alive!\u00a0 \u00a0Ultimately we\u2019re dealing with a crappy hand and making the best of it, and do a rather fine job of that in many ways, exemplified by New Orleans. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My other concern is with the plans for recovery.\u00a0 \u00a0I won\u2019t say much for the moment but this. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A vibrant community, urban spirit and way of life such as New Orleans represents is actually a living thing that grew up on its own without anyone knowing the design. \u00a0\u00a0We certainly don\u2019t know how to make these kinds of things that make life wonderful any more than a farmer knows how to make corn without seed. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What we can tell about the \u2018seed\u2019 of a living community spirit is that it lies in the connections between the people, which the defacto solution for the city was to break and scatter. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That is really not good. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Galveston was never the same again after it was hit by a great storm, and New Orleans seems sure to be greatly changed too. \u00a0\u00a0In life and nature you can never go back.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is, though, a way to improve the chances that the real ancient cultural roots of New Orleans will survive to thrive again. <\/span><\/span>It’s a lesson that applies to lots of other situations too.<\/p>\n

Keep the connections going. In the shelters have neighborhood corners, fund the local paper to expand its web site, capture unused public access TV, etc. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0You can\u2019t tell where that\u2019s going to work, but you can be sure, I think, that the chances of a living community decay rapidly with its connections severed.<\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
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So soon after the embarrassing failure of emergency response it\u2019s a little risky to venture an explanation. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The appearance is that government planning for emergency response to \u201cthe big one\u201d failed to include providing food and shelter for those stranded by it. My opinion is that the problem was mainly that FEMA kept following the … Continue reading Failure in responding to Katrina<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-along","category-mail","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}